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<aside> ⌛ Suggested Time: Total Hours: 100+ hours Full Time Founders: 4-6 weeks Part Time Founders: 2 to 3 months
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We talked earlier about referring to our early-stage products as the minimum viable product or MVP. To add some additional framing, we like to think of our MVP as a product roadmap or a series of early products, rather than a single product. With this definition, we set ourselves up to continuously seek feedback from our customers to improve upon (iterate) our products. Every company will have a different MVP roadmap depending on what risks they need to prioritize and what resources and skills are available.
In our example MVP roadmap below, you can see that we've already done our concierge MVP with a few real customers and built a landing page MVP to test interest in our product.
In this step, we will start with our Alpha MVP, a rather unrefined early product we'll launch to a small closed group of users. We'll be putting together all of the learnings we've had up to this step to build something that solves our customer's problem with a little more scale.
This process of developing your product roadmap will be a part of your prime responsibility as the product manager of your company. As an early-stage startup, the CEO/visionary must take on this role as opposed to outsourcing it. You will have the most information on the customer, and that will be valuable in making product decisions.
Some of you might be concerned with the quality of the product they're selling. After all, consumers are more and more discerning these days. We do hear about many products that benefit from having a beautifully designed Beta. And we agree with you, people's expectations for Betas are pretty high. For this reason, our goal isn't to launch a Beta in this step.
We think of the difference between Alpha and Beta as a matter of your audience size. You've already worked with at least a handful of customers in Step 5: Pilot Test. We aren't proposing that you do a Beta launch at this stage and reach out to journalists to write about your launch. Instead, you should be aiming to find a small group of ten customers. Iterate with this small but closed audience until they are happy. Simultaneously, by incorporating their feedback and iterating, you are building up to your more complete and more scalable Beta product.
Here is where you benefit as a small player. It's much harder for Apple to release a subpar Beta to learn from because they have a reputation to uphold. While they do their version of iteration, they have a much higher bar and risk hurting their valuable brand. You, on the other hand, are a no-name startup. Use it to your advantage! The customers in your small closed Alpha should be completely aware of your startup status and brought in as "co-creators." In exchange for them forgiving inevitable glitches, you'll take their feedback seriously.