Your MVP must be a food truck 🚚
So many founders fall into the trap of over-engineering their MVP.
They aim to build a fancy roof top revolving restaurant on a skyscraper as their v1 🤯
Or they’re trying to prove to VCs that they’re building the next Chipotle (chain) using slick presentations slides without ever serving 1 customer.
This is a recipe for disaster.
Start small and simple. I’d say aim to open up a proverbial “food truck” first and get that first real customer…before leaping into massive bets like rooftop restaurants.
De-risk your idea by investing as little time and money as possible.
Your MVP is just a vehicle to get you into the market.
If you have a developer friend/colleague, you can start your “food truck” business right away without anyone’s permission. (or a VC’s blessing)
If you don’t - that’s ok.
You can quietly learn how to cook too. In other words, use no-code tools to build.
Start with a simple lean menu & test your value prop.
No need to launch with a full blown 300 item menu across several niches. That’s just a sign of insecurity.
Pick one niche (one cuisine like Indian, Mexican or Japanese etc.) and one lean menu with very limited options but get to market ASAP.
Rather than waiting for someone to join you and then potentially serving customers, figure out all the hard problems by first a cook yourself.
Start today.
Find a quiet city spot with hungry customers who are starving for food and are willing to pay. Or offer better/differentiated food in a super crowded market area. Be first or be better/different.
That’s my candid advice for first time founders — especially non-technical founders.
Two instances where I put this advice in action:
I launched my biggest business project (“BIPF”) this year as a lean MVP built using a $8 domain connected to a public Google Doc. I know how to create sophisticated websites with no-code tools like Webflow and Carrd but to move quickly and test my hypothesis, I just built an embarrassing 1st version. Used my energy to hustle my ass off to get to 14 paying customers and now we have a fancy website in place for the 2nd cohort.
I validated a new SaaS idea I had recently called LeaderBird by co-creating it with a developer friend (Zack) over a weekend, then shipping it to a handful users within BIPF, and then gradually to the general public on Twitter. The v1 was very limited and looked super basic. But we got to ~20 paying customers as fast as possible and eventually expanded the scope. This is the way!
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy these:
How to Build An MVP | Startup School by Y Combinator
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And that’s a wrap for now! 🌯
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