There’s this approach that I’ve been toying around with for starting up. I was thinking quitting your 8-5 job and going startup is risky enough as it is. But what makes it even riskier is an approach that requires significant expenditures. And with the relative lack of venture capitalists here, it’s not far fetched that much, if not all, of it comes from your own pockets.
I figured that if that a business idea that can start small and gradually expand by building on top of it would be a prudent approach given the situation. That cuts down on the options and especially rules out grandiose ideas but it certainly is safer and does not at all exclude innovation which, after all, is the fun part. So that’s the approach my dad and brothers are taking for one of our projects.
And today I read about it in an Apple vs Google article from Bloomberg of all things. The key excerpt from the article:
This is essentially what lightly funded startups do—they get a “proof of concept” product on the market quickly to see if their idea is viable and to interest additional investors. It’s known as finding the “minimum viable product” (MVP), a term coined by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup. An MVP is an inexpensive, often jerry-rigged product that delivers the desired consumer experience but at a lower cost, so that consumer interest in the concept can be tested.
Good to know the approach has been tried, tested, and even has a name that you can be bandied around in conversations ;)