What would be your step-by-step approach/plan to build a minimum viable product?

Answered by Lukas Paskauskas, engineer, programmer & marketer

Online business - all you need is a landing page. People buy purely on the perception they build up while scrolling the information you provide on the landing page. There is no need for real product to exists as long as you give an illusion of it being real.

Keep in mind that it is actually ethically and legally questionable to charge someone and then use that money to create a product from scratch. Instead, have a fake "Buy Now" button and measure the amount of clicks. You can even send people to a thank you page immediately. There you state that you are out of products and if people want to know when you restock, they should leave their name and email address.

If you are building a software product - it is much more complicated. Eric Ries described an excellent case study. PayPal's story is a great one too. I have worked in that startup and we would always discuss the new product with our client/customers first. Never, ever we would start programming before nailing down the requirements. Then, we would agree upon the most critical functions and build those first. Modularity here is key. We had a really experienced software architect so it kind of came naturally, but I heard many companies struggling to nail this part down.

When it comes to hardware, it is really broad. I have build couple of hardware MVPs myself, but they were all in mech engineering. I would pick up the cheapest materials and would build something which confirms my hypothesis (for example: "if I make this channel here more divergent, I can increase energy output by 30% - an idea which gave me "the best idea" award in one student startup competition. :)

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