Minimum Viable Product - Start-up and Personal Transformation

Apparently there is a new buzz word out there, "minimum viable product" (MVP) as a part of the "fail fast fail early" idea.  I am glad to hear of this, because it is what I learned forty years ago, have taught for 30 years, and put in my book a decade ago.  It is an extremely important idea, against everything that is taught in schools today (unless in noncredit programs, where I teach.)  We need as many people teaching these ideas as possible.  But they are not new, they were ancient when I learned them forty years ago, but after losing two generations of entrepreneurs to FIRE (finance, investment, real estate) and making pictures to hypnotize people on their ubiquitous phones, all false economy work, we badly need to recover the fail fast fail early and minimum viable product ideas.  We need people back working in design, manufacture, engineering, competition.

I put the MVP and fail fast/early ideas within the context of customers, something still unique to my courses.  This seems to be very popular with the students, so I recommend it to other lecturers. If you glance to the upper right, you'll see links to classes I am offering plus here is a complete list.

On Oct 2, 2014, at 7:29 AM, DK wrote:

Hi John,

The luggage I was working on was too costly for the supplier to develop without financial support. Although I got good buyer feedback the design is quite a bit (say 30-40%) different to what's out there (although it's still a suitcase) so represented a risk - a bit more proto-typing was needed and I decided not to support financially. With more support from buyers in the form of letters of intent perhaps I could've got the supplier to front development. Having canned the idea and had time to reflect I have really bought into your  (and increasing trend amongst others) of Minimum Viable Product - anything beyond minimum order quantity is a wasted opportunity to gain feedback and all that - and I think I can forge ahead with a much simpler design, which will mean it doesn't look 100% like a standard wheeled suitcase but still does the job.

I would have loved to pursue something simpler to get my business up and running, I really want to be in international trade and developing an import/export business, however what's probably held me back is the fact I did all this work on luggage and still believe it's a good idea. The entrepreneurial bug has been kept at bay by working with online businesses in the meantime.

I am sure this is quite a common story you hear from aspiring traders!

DK

Indeed!  I am more and more struck as to how business start-up is necessarily personal-transformation work as well.  What Thomas Sowell calls human capital, that is experience and wisdom in business comes from building a business, and the changes you go through learning to serve others with your skills, brains, heart, etc.  As you develop it yourself, you lend it, your experience, at no cost to others, and this contributes to fostering an economy, not just your economic well-being.

At 56 John Sperling started University of Phoenix, and became a billionaire.  It took a while for him to figure all the moving parts out, and most of his prep work was learning how the world worked so he could find his role in it.    And once he found it, he put his money into how to extend his life so he can spend more time here.

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