FFF 3: The One Day MVP

Hello friend, welcome back to the Business Kingmaker Newsletter,

So, in our previous letter, I talked about finding the weakness in existing solutions and how you can compliment them with an already existing solution, package something cool and exchange it for money.

If you're a new subscriber, you can read previous letters here (https://tbk.beehiiv.com/posts) to get more context on what I'm teaching in FFF, they build up on each other and will be valuable for starting out.

So, after connecting the weakness you've found to a complimentary solution you need to validate it by building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). In just one day.

MVP means trimming out everything you want to do and keep one core thing you need to offer to customers to get some form of interest initially and scale from there.

You can't build it at once and spend so much time, (even if you're not spending money) to have it potentially not work.

You need to start from the least risk possible to validate your idea, sometimes it won't work and you may have to go back to the step 1, but that's just what it is and I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. That's why it's important to have an MVP.

When I was starting out, I watched lots of YouTube videos, read lots of blogs, books, took courses etc., and they all said something;

"Build an MVP in weeks, not months".

That's actually true—only if we were in 2015.

Don't build an MVP in weeks, it's too much.

I did this and failed plenty times, because most of the videos I was watching were a little older. And one thing about mankind is we're constantly evolving and improving really fast.

You no longer need much resources to pull it off anymore. You can do an MVP in hours (if not minutes by the time I post this), not weeks.

What's an MVP really?

People think it's their main feature, let's say you're building a ride hailing platform like Uber, people think their MVP is the ride hailing algorithm, wrong.

You might start with the "core feature" and it may work for you, but it's still risky and depends on your confidence level, it's a method that works, and makes you feel more comfortable (that's why many people fall for it).

It makes you comfortable in the sense that it gives you more comfort from "what if I can't do it? Or what if it doesn't work?" Phobia, "Let me just build the core feature that's in my head in silence, so if it doesn't work, nobody would lose trust in me".

In 2021, I did this for months, obsessing on a complete sophisticated animation software I built with Python (incredibly hard to pull off at the time, it was the first of it's kind) and launched it after 6 months, plenty downloads within the first month before the project soon died.

So I wasted 6 months in a comfortable grind.

It's more comfortable but it's not the best approach in terms of coming up with something that works the fastest way possible and start growing from Day 0 cause we want to spend less resources.

You need to ask yourself a very hard question, if you were stripped down butt-naked of everything that the vision of what you're building has, what's the one thing you'll keep in your asshole?

It's the audience. The audience is the MVP.

But Praise, you're making me angry, how can I get a bunch of people to believe in something that doesn't exist, what if it doesn't even work? Or I disappoint them?

I'm not saying you should start gathering audience for a teleporting machine when you have no clue whatsoever on how it would work with solid proof. I'm assuming you must've read my previous letters and have followed the framework I've given. If you followed that, you'll have a pretty solid idea you can persuade people to, cause if you can believe it, people will believe in it too, you just have to educate them and make them see the same things you see.

Just be transparent to them, don't lie to them, just say what it really is; I'm building this stuff, I think it'll be really helpful because [how your product is important], join my wait-list to get access once it launches next week.

If it doesn't work, then so be it, you can be transparent about that as well (people love authenticity), and you won't waste all of that time and resources building the product to have it potentially not work.

Plus, having an audience makes you get the "Oh shit! People actually want this stuff 😱" feeling, and will make you so uncomfortable you won't be able to sleep at night cause all you want to do is build it so you won't let anyone down.

Another bonus, you can always leverage the audience for something else, If the project doesn't work out, you would have lessons. Use the lessons, you might find a way to pivot and still attack the same problem for the same audience with an even better solution.

That's what you need to do, create a wait-list or Signup page or something simple where you can collect their email, or other contact and basically warm them up and hit them up with your offer when the time comes.

Some years ago it might have taken you weeks to setup that kind of thing, but now they're free tools to setup that kind of stuff in minutes. Use stuff like carrd.co or just research more suitable tools.

Even if you have coding prowess, I'll still recommend using a drag and drop for more speed, unless there's a specific thing that's very important for the way you want to get the leads, but always remember to keep things simple and fast.

I remember spending hours looking for the perfect name, weeks trying to craft the perfect logo and still had to change it when I pivoted.

Don't waste time on bullshit like me, here's a quick tip; if you want to name it, just go with something quick, join two words together or do something like removing vowels or adding -ify suffix. Better still, use a free tool like namelix.com to aid you with some ideas.

For my project I could go with Tipr, Tippify, CryptoTip etc. It may not give you that "this is it 🙌" feeling, but don't spend too much time on it, just use it, you can always change the name.

Imagine having the perfect name for something no one cares about.

Also try searching your potential name on Google to make sure it's not been taken and to make it easier to rank on top with minimal Search Engine Optimization.

I also have some logo tips, but my logo tip for this stage is... don't spend any time thinking about logo.

Just use the name with some font, the logo will be a final touch once you start getting traction.

The biggest companies have the simplest logos and names, because it gets clearer the more you create the reality you want. The logo will come naturally or with minimal effort later on. We just want to focus on what matters and do the details later.

Note, if the solution you're building involves logos, then it'd make sense to have a logo, I'm giving a broad framework and you have to personalize it with your creativity like I've explained before.

How do you get people to join your MVP?

You need eyeballs and traffic, and you need to learn how to sell shamelessly like a hawker.

This is what I'll be dissecting on the next email:

FFF 4: Traffic

Keep your eyes peeled for it, time to go build my MVP for Blocktip.

Enjoy the rest of your day,

I'm Praise J.J.

Remember to share this newsletter to whomever you think it'll help, peace ✌️