What's more valuable in the very early days: building an audience or building an MVP?
Ben Katz
58 replies
I've heard varying opinions on this and have my own thoughts but I'd love to hear multiple sides of the argument from the community!
While you're here, you can find me on twitter here: https://twitter.com/benlkatz
Replies
Saul Fleischman@osakasaul
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Build the MPV. People are growing weary of the startup that makes big promises, expects us to give our emails for "early access" - but with little reason to believe that they can pull off any of what they promise.
Prove what you can deliver first.
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@osakasaul Agree that it's important to deliver. I do think the early access strategy is a great one for getting product validation
Both are required actually! If you have an MVP then you need a target audience in order to test the MVP. We can't test the MVP with the internal team, right?
EnVsion AI
In most cases just having a good product at the start is not enough. You need to have strong distribution too. This could be having an audience or bringing lots of organic traffic via SEO.
Ultimately you need both good product and strong distribution, but at the early stage I feel distributions matters more.
Hyperquery
If I had to choose one to focus on FIRST: building an audience. It's difficult to test your MVP and gather proper insights without an audience.
Pitchery
I'd build the MVP - my audience needs to see what I am building for them to see the value. Also, I want to attract a niche audience who will have the higher probability of converting as early paying customers.
@swapdp_01 There are benefits to both. I think the best option is to try and chip away at both at the same time whenever possible
ChatWebby AI
Both building an audience and building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) are important. However, the priority given to one or the other can vary depending on the specific circumstances of the startup.
If you have a unique and innovative product idea that solves a real problem, then it is important to have a working MVP to validate your concept and attract potential customers. Building an MVP in this case would be the priority.
On the other hand, if you are entering a crowded market and need to differentiate yourself, building an audience first through marketing and branding efforts can help establish your brand and create early demand for your product. In this case, building an audience would take priority over building an MVP.
Your MVP or solution will definitely change so having an audience that is interested in the problem you are solving is more important.
Chicken and egg...but if I had to pick one, I'd say MVP.
However, building an "idea audience" of people who will be excited to try out your product should probably be happening at the same time to determine product market fit asap 🤷♂️
Liftoffs
Personally I think that MVP is more important, but before building it you have to find a problem your future audience have.
@danya_pashuk Great insight, Danylo. It's an interesting problem. MVP is more important for making progress on your business but audience gives you distribution which is a cheat code to growth
The more reliable strategy: audience.
If you've got insight on a rare problem that HAS to be solved: MVP
@travis_page appreciate the insight here, Travis! Agree with you. Having solid distribution is a huge advantage.
@benjamin_katz2 Been thinking about this more. I guess it really depends how you define what a "Product" is. You can use a newsletter to build a killer audience. You can use a Discord to build a killer audience. You can use these community tools to provide value to a group of people with the intention of figuring out what common painpoints they have and eventually BUILD a product....... But at that specific point in time, is the value from the newsletter/discord/facebook group the product?
Definitely focus on building an audience. Start by reaching out to close friends who might benefit from your idea.
To give a professional touch, you can create a landing page with a sign-up form for early access and include a section for potential customers to ask questions.
Twinr - App Builder
For me, MVP.
TransferChain
I think it is important to do both simultaneously. However, I'd spent the majority of my effort on building the MVP so that the functionalities and features are ready for the users when going live. The audience can grow through personal networks at first. Only when the product is live, I'd get involved with heavy marketing efforts (e.g. SEO)
MVP for sure.
You can do both at the same time
@richard_gao2 That is definitely the goal, but I'm still curious about your opinion if you had to pick just one
@richard_gao2 is that true?
@richard_gao2 Whenever someone makes a claim like this, I always check. Looks like you ARE doing both at the same time. Look at that traffic spike (mostly from organic and referral)! Good work 🦾. Proof >> https://capture.dropbox.com/mSML...
@travis_page Yep. Been promoting this before I launched. But if you HAVE to choose one, then building is better.
Also, what app did you use to get those stats for my website? Would love to check it out
@richard_gao2 SimilarWeb Google Extension. They are typically lagging 1-3 months, but are directionally accurate. Gives a solid breakdown of GEO & referral traffic (organic, paid, social, etc), too.
Extension here: https://www.similarweb.com/corp/...
HarvyAI - Professional Email Assistant
Audience/target customers. Without them what's the point of building something?
Honestly, I don't think you can choose just one. We are building our product and balanced too much onto development/product part, without focusing on the audience enough, and now we have to "catch up" on that to move on. If you focus on bulding your MVP only, you may end up at dead end where the cost of further development is simply too high, because you didn't verify your choices enough. If you build an audience without the product, you may find it difficult to keep them interested before your product is ready. So I'd say - build stuff and keep everyone notified about that ;)
@kamil_kollman Good advice, Kamil! It's important to build but it's equally important to have distribution once you're done building
EmbedQuiz
I think both are important and none of them could work out well without the other!
You need an audience to get feedback as soon as possible, but you also need an MVP to be prepared if your audience says your product idea is not valid.
A good idea is to build an audience for your personal brand and later on when you have a new MVP you can use the same audience to get feedback from.