Minimal Viable Product versus Minimal Viable Business Model

During this year I have been working with a small team to build a minimal viable food brand and product for testing.  I have written about this journey under the title Project FB.  Early results appears pretty good.  We learnt lots about the product, the right recipes and flavour combinations.  We tried different ingredients and different suppliers.  We learnt more about the product than just this, we learnt how to sell it, what support you need, and how it performs in a small retail environment.  All of this is very encouraging and very valuable.

But what we didn’t learn or even consider is how to produce the product at scale and how that business model might work.  I think it is fair to say we had some ideas, but we never had clarity, let alone discussions with possible resource providers to help us.  Is this good, or bad, or neither?  Perhaps we might be in a position to move with more speed now had we developed a fuller business model.  Perhaps we would have had more momentum in the business and perhaps even some positive cash flow.  We will never know.  On the flip side, we have mitigated expenditure and not spent time in areas that would possibly not ultimately get to market.  The business model has grown organically as we have learnt new things.

The learning for me is that a Minimal Viable Product may successfully validate an idea and may provide a number of insights to make the ultimate product or service better.  However, having a successful MVP is only step one.  People must understand that after this first step, there are multiple other steps to go through and that these take time.  These include supplier development, packaging development, sales development, distribution and logistics solutions.  In other words an successful MVP is the trigger to start building a robust business model.  Conceptually at first, but ultimately in the flesh.   Moving from business model concept to reality is hard, time consuming, and requires the will not to give up.

The Importance of Winning at Product Level

Brands are an essential vehicle for getting consumers to love your product and buy into your values, but they become even more valuable if the product is truly best in class too.  In the food industry a great test is to say, “if my product was tasted alongside everyone else’s without packaging or branding, would mine still come out as the best one to buy?” If so you are in a strong position, because you can still overlay a great packaging format, a great brand with strong values and recognisable packaging, a competitive price, all to add even more competitive value and differentiation.

To find out just how good your product is, it is perhaps worth considering how the brain senses may evaluate your product.  So as an example using food, get your product out on the table alongside all your competitors and ask:-

Does my product look truly more appetizing than anyone else’s?

Does the smell of my product get my taste buds more excited than the smell of any other product?

Do I win on great taste?

Is the texture and feel of my product better than the competition?

If you can answer yes to all of these you have a winning product with the potential  to be underpinned with great branding and great marketing!

Looks good, smells good. feels good, tastes good…… probably is pretty good!!