Assessing the Role of Minimum Viable Products in Digital Startups

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with minimal but enough number of features to be used by end users to assess the product in terms of its functionality and ease of use. Startups, specifically digital startups use MVP to gain better insight in to design issues and features of newly made products to make them better in future. A better product in terms of desired features and innovation ensures its applicability in market and enables startups to scale with the passage of time. As there is very little research on usage and impact of MVPs on startup performance we have tried to gain insight in to different usages of MVPs in digital startups. Our findings show that different kinds of MVPs such as digital prototypes, 3D MVPs etc. serve different purposes such as feature validation and idea extraction at different phases of startups. We have also identified different challenges faced by technical team while designing MVP. These include challenges regarding time, budget, communicating ideas with stakeholders and identifying the most valuable features for the MVP.