Ready to get your startup off the ground without overspending? Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the way to go. A bare-bones version of your product is what every startup needs to test and validate their idea and gauge market demand.
However, It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to build a perfect product right away. As an agency, we’ve often seen founders overcomplicate their MVPs, which can derail the project and exhaust your budget before the product even hits the market.
Startups often operate with limited resources, making every dollar count. That’s why it’s important to be smart and keep MVP development costs down. Here are some practical strategies for building an MVP on a budget.
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Focus on mission-critical features only
The idea behind an MVP is to identify one critical problem your users have and how you’re going to solve it. But a common mistake I see founders make is making their product design too complex.
Startups can get caught in a vicious cycle of adding too many non-critical features in an attempt to impress stakeholders, outdo competitors, or secure funding. The result is a clustered design that can overwhelm visitors and discourage them from using your product. You also create more work for your developers which can delay your launch date.
I’ve seen firsthand how products have been turned down by investors for being “too polished” or “too refined,” with feedback such as “You should have launched 6 months ago and gathered feedback.”
To avoid that, focus on your main value proposition (what is the single most important problem your product solves?). Then, prioritize features that address this directly. Ask yourself this: what functionality must be absolutely included for the product to be usable? If you’re not sure about a particular feature, leave it out of the MVP.
If you’re struggling with this, one practical exercise for prioritizing features is the impact-effort matrix. Make a list of features and assign them into four buckets, based on the effort it would take your team to implement the feature vs the value they provide for your users:
- Quick Wins: This is your ‘High Impact / Low Effort’ bucket. These are your must-have features.
- Big Bets: Features that deliver high value, but also require significant resources to build. Might not be suitable for the MVP stage.
- Fill Ins: Nice-to-have features, leave them for future iterations.
- Money Pit: Features that demand a lot of effort for minimal return. Avoid these.
Another strategy is creating user stories – simple, concise descriptions of a feature from the perspective of the end-user. User stories help you stay laser-focused on user needs and prioritize features that directly improve their experience.
For example, if you’re developing a fitness app, one of your user stories might sound like this: “As a fitness enthusiast, I want to be able to track my daily workouts, so I can see my progress over time and stay motivated.”
By launching a simple, focused and functional MVP, you can quickly gather feedback and improve your product, iteration by iteration.
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Adopt a component-based architecture
A component-based architecture is an approach to developing products where you build reusable components that you can ‘recycle’ across as many screens as possible. Each component is a piece of functionality (e.g. buttons, forms, navigation bars, etc).
Start by identifying common features that will be used in multiple parts of your application.
Once you create a component, you can use it across your product or even in future projects, without having to design and build it from scratch each time. This not only cuts down on development time and resources but also makes maintenance and updates more manageable.
For example, say you’re building an e-commerce platform. You can create a product card component that displays the product image, name, price, and product description. This component can then be reused throughout the home page, category pages, and search results. And if you need to make any changes, you only have to do it in one place.
Choose a framework that allows reusability
On the topic of component-based architecture, you also need to consider the tech stack you’re going to use to power your MVP and choose a framework that supports reusability.
Several modern frameworks are designed with reusability in mind, with built-in functionalities and powerful features to build and launch an MVP quickly and within budget.
Here are a few that stand out:
React
- React uses a component-based architecture that allows you to create reusable UI components.
- Since React is a library rather than a framework, it offers greater flexibility to integrate with other libraries and tools according to your project’s needs. For example, libraries like Material-UI or Ant Design provide pre-built, reusable UI components that integrate seamlessly with React.
- React’s ecosystem also includes tools like Storybook, which helps in developing, testing, and documenting reusable components.
Angular
- Angular provides a comprehensive toolkit with a strong emphasis on modular development. Developers can create self-contained, independent components, each encapsulating specific functionality, that can be easily reused across screens.
- Features like two-way data binding, dependency injection, and a powerful CLI (Command Line Interface) make Angular a solid choice for startups.
Vue.js
- Vue.js allows you to define components in single-file formats, including the template, logic, and styling. This makes it easy to create reusable components that can be imported and used across your app.
- Vue also has a rich ecosystem of component libraries, such as Vuetify and Element, that offer pre-built components to streamline development.
At All Front, we like to use Angular or React on the front end, with Firebase, or Postgres + Node for the back end. This stack is highly scalable, which means that your platform can adapt easily as your user base grows. Using these services also reduces the need for extensive infrastructure and maintenance, keeping development and operational costs low.
Another good thing is that these frameworks have a large community and support available. You can find solutions to most common problems quickly, further speeding up development and reducing costs.
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Leverage third-party libraries and APIs
If you want to quickly get your product off the ground with a limited budget, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. That’s where third-party solutions come in with pre-built components that you would otherwise spend significant time and money to build from scratch.
For example, integrating Stripe for payments or using Firebase for back-end services can save you considerable time and effort.
However, there might be some design and functionality trade-offs. For example, a third-party UI library might not perfectly match your design vision, or using external APIs might mean sacrificing some functionality if it isn’t supported out of the box.
Some additional things to keep in mind:
- Be aware of vendor lock-in: When you become overly dependent on a particular third-party service, switching to another provider can prove difficult due to the costs and effort required to migrate data. Read the fine print and choose solutions that are flexible and well-documented.
- Be aware of hidden or unclear pricing: For example, with one of our client projects, we found out a bit too late that the way we were using Google Maps was not going to be cost-effective and would drive up usage costs too much for the product to be efficient, so we had to look for alternatives.
To get the most benefit from this approach, you need to work closely with your development team to understand what is and isn’t possible for your project. In my experience, using third-party tools has proved to be cost-effective, given that you’re flexible and willing to make some compromises.
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Work with a lean team
Building a cost-effective MVP requires not only the right tools but also a strong team who follows lean practices and is aligned with your mission and values. For startups, there are generally 3 options:
- Bringing in a technical co-founder: Say you have a great idea but lack technical skills. Partnering with a technical co-founder who shares your vision can be invaluable. Keep in mind though that finding the right co-founder can be challenging. You also need to be prepared to offer equity. To find a co-founder, you can try a co-founder matching platform (Y Combinator has one), or actively networking on LinkedIn, conferences, or even technical schools near you.
- Hiring an internal team: An internal team offers full control over the development process, however, hiring and training the right people can be a time-consuming and expensive process, especially for an early-stage startup.
- Working with a software development agency: Third-party agencies have already established teams and processes in place that can help you get off to a running start quickly. This can also be a cost-effective option, as you can scale resources up or down as needed. But you need to be careful when evaluating different agencies. You need someone who has a proven track record, the right skills and the right culture fit.
Depending on the complexity, you’re more likely better off working with a smaller lean team.
The benefits of a lean team
- Cost-Effective: With fewer team members, you can allocate your budget more effectively, ensuring that you invest in quality rather than quantity.
- Speed: Smaller teams can adapt quickly, make decisions faster, and pivot when necessary based on user feedback or market changes.
- Quality: A focused team can maintain high standards of quality, as each member has a clear understanding of their responsibilities and the project’s goals.
For example, a project we recently managed had a team of two developers and a UX designer. We delivered the first MVP in just 2 months, gathering valuable user feedback that guided the next iteration.
Key Takeaways
Building a cost-effective MVP is a crucial step for startups looking to test and validate their ideas without exhausting their budget. During this process, you need to keep a laser-sharp focus on what matters, aka delivering only the core functionalities that solve the primary problem of your users.
By choosing the right tools and development approach, you can speed time-to-market which is essential for the MVP stage while keeping costs at bay. Keep in mind that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can opt for off-the-shelf solutions that deliver the functionality you need without breaking the bank, which can work great for startups.
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