How to Build a Scalable Minimum Viable Product

Minimum viable meets maximum flexible

If I gave you unlimited funds, time, and talent, could you build a wildly successful product?

Wait. Stop. It’s a trick question. None of those things actually matter.

As recently as a few years ago, a startup could get away with hiring a crack development team to build a product from the ground up, based solely on a good idea. They would then test the market with a beta, tweak a few things, and go on to enjoy a successful release. That didn’t happen all the time. In fact, it was rare. But it happened.

The same strategy is just not possible today. Today, while not every product has to be software to be successful, almost every product must use software and data to measure and determine its scalability.

I’ve been building software products — as well as using software to build products — for over 20 years. I’ve built them the right way and I’ve built them the wrong way. Along that path, the conventional wisdom was always: “If we code this, we make money.” Turns out that’s almost never true. The truth is actually: “If we code this, we save money.”

Technology doesn’t sell a product, it only serves to make the product cheaper to scale. With today’s MVP approach, oftentimes the rush…