MVP vs. POC: A Startup Launch Strategy Guide

If you’re about to build a new genius idea, take care of your airbag — it could be an MVP and a POC of your product.

What do all startups dream about? Gaining success is the first thing for any entrepreneur no matter if he sleeps or awake. The market becomes more and more saturated with time, and making the product perfect is the number one goal on the preparation stage.

If you’re about to build a new genius idea, take care of your airbag — it could be an MVP and a POC of your product. These two methods are used in app development all the time, and you might want to know what’s so special about them. Today, we’re here to tell you everything from the ground up.

Proof of Concept (POC): Be Sure You Chose the Right Way

Building and launching a new product take much of your time and creativity. It’s great to know that your idea is really worth sharing and further development, isn’t it? That’s when you should turn to the POC (Proof of Concept).

Proof of Concept is all about testing an idea and making conclusions about its viability on the market. POC will only give you the “yes” or “no” answer, but it’s really helpful for lots of entrepreneurs. Even when the answer is “no”, it’s possible to find a better way from the same starting point.

At first, you may think that not every project needs the POC stage. But it’s only partially true. These are two important points for your consideration:

An intensive competition doesn’t require extra testing. It may seem so because there are lots of similar products having the same idea in its core. For instance, we’re talking about messaging apps. Creators of such apps don’t need to prove that this idea is worth working on. They can spend their time researching the market, learning more about mistakes and successful stories of competitors. But as often happens, there’s something more to think about.
Your product needs to stand out. Another side of the competitive market game is difficulties in user attraction. If you’re about to start working on the messaging app, there should be some space for unique features to attract potential customers. This is where POC becomes your concern and necessity.

In any case, we recommend you opt for POC beginning of your project. These are the main questions you should ask yourself with the help of professional technicians:

1. The existence of demand. The demand for your product can be latent or really existing on the market right now. People should be interested in your product for you to move forward.

2. Create the product people are waiting for. Do the features of your product are appealing for you or your future customers? The right strategy is to look at your app with the user’s eyes.

3. Measure the product growth. Can you tell now whether your application will be mass-produced or growing gradually with your business? If this question is too difficult, cancel the next steps.

4. Monetizing strategy. There are several ways to monetize your app, but if your product doesn’t fit any of them, it is a warning sign for your business.

5. The level of flexibility. On this stage, you have to think how adaptive your app will be when people’s needs change. The market environment is highly variable, and it gladly welcomes only flexible solutions.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Your Idea in a Nutshell

No matter how big your idea is, it must find its embodiment sooner or later. On this stage, you should remember that even the greatest ways started with the first few steps. We recommend you gather your first steps in an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Minimum Viable Product is your basic idea wrapped up in the number of essential features. It is important for the startup strategy as it allows learning more about the product with less effort.

MVP helps to answer the most important questions about your project, so the focus here is on your vision vs. your target audience. You should know that the value of your product meets the user’s expectations. This is what you will find out:

The usefulness of your product for the target audience.
How the final user likes both your idea and its embodiment.
Defects emerging in the user flow.
The attractiveness of the user interface.
Whether all key features are really necessary or not.
Any additional features that should be implemented as soon as possible.

All of this knowledge is precious for your further activities in the product creation. But how to build the MVP that would really work for your business and bring you all the necessary information? This is what we suggest you consider:

Define your goal. We know that your idea takes all of your thoughts (or at least many of them). What we ask you here is to gather these thoughts into a specific goal clear for the team of developers — they should know what exactly they’re creating.
Don’t let your focus blur. As you want everything to be perfect, it’s very tempting to make the list of initial features endless. But don’t fall in that trap! You can forever stay on the development stage with a bunch of useless functionality. Only the basic features here — remember that.
Don’t wait too long on the stage of design. We have no doubts that design is a vital part for your MVP where each detail is important. But here’s another trap — the longer you work on the perfect look of your app, the more time you lose. The MVP concept was invented to quickly bring the primary results, so the perfect design can wait.
Show them what you’ve got. As soon as you have an MVP ready to be used, present it to the audience. Don’t hesitate and don’t think that lots of things could be done. If customers like your MVP, you’ll get lots of space for your creativity. But for now, only your core proposition matters.
Don’t ever forget about the users. Yes! People love your product, and they want to see more. This is when you can think about additional features and a more sophisticated design. And, of course, consider all of the opinions coming from the audience — only working in collaboration with users will lead you to the advancement.

POC vs. MVP: One Continues Another

It’s already obvious that both POC and MVP are important parts of the startup marketing strategy. To quickly regain everything we’ve mentioned today, let’s take a look at this small cheat sheet.

POC vs. MVP

You can’t replace one concept with another, and you can also get some priceless knowledge when using both of them.

Small but Precious Primary Steps

We’ve all been at the beginning of the complicated something. Fortunately, when it comes to software development projects, you already know what to do. Firstly, you’ve got the POC aspect, testing your first thoughts and ideas. Secondly, you will deal with an MVP, which is the core idea coming to life. Even the best mobile product starts little, so don’t wait much time to hit the road.