Why you should consider low-code MVPs for your startup

Introduction

For a startup, the tech industry is one of the hardest to break into. The tech world is fiercely competitive, for enterprises and consumers alike; and the tech marketplace bears witness to breakthroughs in emerging technologies and disruptive product launches on a daily basis. Despite more and more startups reaching unicorn status in 2021, many new businesses are still struggling to get their product ideas off the ground and launch their apps successfully.

Since startups usually have limited resources, smaller development groups, and tighter launch windows, it makes sense to adopt an approach that is more linear and has a direct impact on business. That's where the need for an MVP, a minimum viable product, arises.

The MVP approach for startups

Hitting the right market segment at the right time with a new product can prove to be a challenge for any startup. As an entrepreneur, you hope to launch your product with all features functioning flawlessly, having identified and solved all the problems discovered during the initial market study process.

However, no matter how much you validate and research your product, it will never be as effective as getting your app into the hands of your customers and having them start using it. You can then utilize the user feedback to make incremental improvements and release frequent app iterations.

One way for a startup to solicit and secure feedback is to deliver a minimum viable product (MVP). Of all the approaches used to launch products, the MVP approach is the quickest and most established route to success.

What is an MVP?

The concept of MVPs gained popularity after Eric Ries described it in his book The Lean Startup.

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a theory from the Lean Startup movement that stresses the impact of learning through user feedback in product development. Eric Ries defines an MVP as "that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort". The MVP you produce is an actual product with minimal features that early adopters of your app can use. You can then gather feedback from your user base to improve and build a better product that will resonate with future users.