You've Launched Your MVP - What Now?

Majemu Olowodola at UXDX Community: Africa. Video: https://youtu.be/3W4yAEBuCFc

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Chaka and Smart Invest

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name is Majemu Olowodola, and currently I lead the product team at Chaka Technologies. Chaka is a platform that powers borderless investment for Africans. We have a range of products, ranging from our stock trading platform to Chaka for Business. We have SDKs and APIs available to fintechs and other traditional stockbrokers. And of course, our recently launched product, Smart Invest.

[00:00:31] Smart Invest is a platform that provides access to specially curated assets across different asset classes. When I talk about assets, I mean stocks, ETFs, bonds, real estate assets and so on. We have specially curated portfolios created by finance experts. Smart Invest is the product for the category of users who really don't have much insight or knowledge into the stock market. They really want to invest, they really want to grow wealth, but they don't know what exactly to invest in, what exactly to put their money in. With Smart Invest, we take that hard work off your shoulders. We do the hard work of creating a portfolio for you. All you need to do is come on board and fund, and your funds get invested. And then you can monitor the growth of your portfolio.

[00:01:29] I'm really excited to be here, I'm just putting that out there, and I hope you enjoy this talk. Today my talk is titled "You've Launched Your MVP, What Now?" It all starts with an idea. All of the successful products, and even the not-so-successful ones, always start with an idea. You have an idea of a product you want to build. It could come from an individual, it could come from a group of people. It can come from everywhere. But you can't stop at just being an idea. You need to move to the next step. You need to bring that idea to life. So you have an idea of a product you want to build. Now, what's next? How do you bring that idea to life?

[00:02:13] Just to give a little bit of background: throughout this talk, I'll be running through how we built and launched our MVP, Smart Invest, that I talked about, and basically sharing the entire process we went through. What worked, what didn't work, what the lessons were that we learned in the process. So it's more practical and less of me sharing a lot of theoretical knowledge, because I'm sure we already know a lot of these things.

Why launch with an MVP

[00:02:47] At Chaka, I talked about our traditional product. We were able to see that the people that really enjoyed using it were more experienced traders, people that have an idea of stock markets. They know what to invest in, and they can understand market trends and all. But we saw that there's still this vast market of people who really want to invest, who really want to grow wealth, but they don't know what to invest in. That was when the idea of Smart Invest came to life. And of course, we knew that to be able to bring it to reality, we needed to build and launch fast. So we had to release our MVP first.

[00:03:35] I'm sure we all know what an MVP is, but just for the sake of people that might watch this and don't know: your minimum viable product is a basic, launchable version of the product that supports minimal yet must-have features, which define the value proposition. In simple terms, your MVP consists of the least amount of features that you can put out there that would actually give the value your product is supposed to give to users.

[00:04:10] That's one of the mistakes a lot of startups make. You're trying to build something, and you really want to build all of the features, all of the ideas you have. And you see that you're building for one year, two years, three years, and it's almost looking like an unending cycle. That's where an MVP is really important. You build fast and you're able to launch quickly.

[00:04:32] One of the reasons why MVPs are really important is, first of all, that it helps in validating the idea. The reality is that the idea you have of the product you want to build is really just an assumption. You're just assuming that users really have this problem, and that your product would actually solve this problem. But there are times and cases where you might actually be wrong. Fine, users might actually have that problem, but the direction in which you're thinking about solving it might not be the best one. So if you spend too much time and channel a lot of energy into trying to build something big, you might end up having to start from scratch, or saying that it's not really something that users need. An MVP enables early testing of the idea with actual users, to check whether the product is able to solve their problems efficiently.

[00:05:31] Then also, quick launch. I talked about how we really wanted to go to market fast. First of all to be able to validate the idea, and then also to be able to hit the market fast. Especially if you're building something new in a novel sector, if you have a novel idea, launching fast gives you that first-mover advantage. You're pretty much the first person to hit the market with that product. An MVP is basically intended to enable faster time to market, attract early adopters, and achieve product-market fit from early on. I'll talk about some of these other things later on and share our experiences.

[00:06:15] And then, your initial customers. Those first set of users that get to use your product, that get to test your product, that are available to give you feedback. Launching an MVP helps you get the first set of users to use and interact with your product and see if they actually get value out of it. So this is just a brief intro to what an MVP is and why launching first with an MVP is really important.

The steps to build and launch an MVP

[00:06:44] On this slide, I have the steps it takes to build and launch your MVP. I got this image online, and it was pretty much in line with the steps that we took in launching our MVP. First, it started with market research. I talked about how, from data and from feedback from customers, we were able to see that there is this need among customers for an opportunity to invest in assets chosen by experts, where they don't really need to think so much about it.

[00:07:22] What we did first with our market research is we started with a survey. Even though we already had this background knowledge that users actually want this, users actually need this, just to be sure we were on the right track, we rolled out a survey. Basically, questions that help us see if users actually see that they have this problem that we want to solve, and if users are actually thinking along the lines of the kind of solution we're trying to provide. From there we were able to get feedback from data, where we said, "Oh yeah, we're on the right track." There was a large number of users who actually have this problem of not knowing what to invest in, and they really want to grow wealth. They really want a platform where they don't need to do the heavy thinking, but can just fund and watch their money grow. So that was how we conducted the market research first.

[00:08:32] The next thing was to ideate on value addition. Pretty much important questions, and it's very important that from early on you have them documented. What problem exactly are you trying to solve? What value are you bringing to customers? Because there are probably a lot of ways to actually solve this problem for customers. So you're reminding yourself: this is how we want to solve this problem. This is our value proposition. Probably even your unique selling points: this is why we think we should be able to stand out in the market. So pretty much just ideate, think through and refine the idea.

[00:09:29] I'm very big on documentation. It's really important, beyond the idea being stuck in everybody's head, just to be sure we're all on the same page across the team, everybody building. I find documentation to be really, really important. So document the idea. Even from that early stage, you can start writing out the requirements documentation, specifications and all of those, so that there's a central place that describes what we're building, what problem we're solving and how we want to solve it for customers.

[00:10:08] The next step is to map out the user flow. This is more like the design pattern, the design system. How is the user's experience going to be on the product? Where does the user journey start? So pretty much mapping out the user journey. For us, especially for the MVP, we wanted to make it as simple as possible, so the user flow was straightforward. You come on board. For us to be able to determine the kind of investor you are, or your risk appetite, you go through a profiling questionnaire. So you sign up, go through the profiling questionnaire, and from there you are assigned a portfolio category. It could be conservative, it could be growth, depending on your kind of investor based on your responses to the questionnaire.

[00:11:09] We assign a portfolio to you, and from there, all you need to do is fund, and immediately your funds get invested in the assets in the portfolio, because the portfolio has already been designed by experts. So it was straightforward. Come on board, go through the profiling questionnaire, fund, and your funds get invested. We made sure the user flow was as clear and simple as that, so that everybody knows, okay, this is what the user journey looks like on the platform.

[00:11:41] Next was to prioritize the MVP features. Remember I said your MVP features have to be as minimal as possible. I know there's always that temptation in products: "Ah, we can actually just squeeze in this feature. It won't hurt if we add these two extra features. We feel like it will make the product extra cool." But as much as possible, try to make it as minimal as possible. Then also, prioritize, so that if for any reason you need to add or remove something, it's based on the priority level. It also helps if developers and engineers have to work on it. They know this is the top priority; these are what we want to knock off first.

[00:12:22] Then of course, after prioritizing, you build. And then you launch your MVP. After launch, you exercise the build. The last step in the chart that we have here is to exercise build, measure and learn. After launch, of course, you most likely will not want to stop there. You're not stopping there. You want to start building, start improving on the MVP that's been launched. Then measure your happy metrics and the things that you want to measure. Then of course, learn, because you'll be getting a lot of feedback from customers. So this in all is just a brief summary of how to build and launch your MVP.

Exploring a no-code MVP

[00:13:13] One really important concept that I would really love to talk about is exploring a no-code MVP. In launching our MVP, we didn't write any code. Even though of course we have a team of developers, a team of engineers and all, we just thought it was more effective. Because we wanted to launch faster and validate the idea in time, it made more sense to explore launching with a no-code MVP.

[00:13:45] Remember when I described the user flow. The actual flow starts with you taking the profiling questionnaire. Then you fund, and immediately your funds get invested. Then of course, after they get invested, you get to see your portfolio performance, how your assets are performing. You see graphs and charts explaining your performance. Since the user flow is quite simple, we thought there were no-code tools that we could actually adopt to help us achieve this faster.

[00:14:26] First thing, we sent out emails. For us, we already had an existing user base, so we sent out emails. And not just to our existing users, but even on social media, in our Telegram community and all of those. We sent out a waitlist form, which was just a basic Typeform where you just needed to provide your email address. That was even before we launched the MVP. The waitlist was after the initial survey we sent out when we did the market research. If you remember the steps that I described, the first step was the market research. We had a survey there, and we also sent out a form for you to provide your email address so you'd be added to the waitlist.

[00:15:27] Since we already had a lot of people that had shown interest, what we did was set up the profiling questionnaire on Typeform and send it out to the guys in studio [?], the people that had shown interest and already signed up for the waitlist. From the responses we got on Typeform, we could attach numbers that we could use to calculate and understand the kind of investor you are and assign a portfolio to you. After filling in the profiling questionnaire on Typeform, you get an email telling you the portfolio that's going to be assigned to you and how you can fund.

[00:16:13] Here in Nigeria we have what we call virtual NUBAN [?]. We have providers that give you bank accounts. That's what a lot of fintechs use: you have bank accounts that all you need to do is make a money transfer to, and it automatically funds your wallet on the fintech platform. That was what we used, because it was straightforward. We didn't need you to start entering card details and all of these things, since we didn't actually have an actual product yet. So we just sent the bank account details, which are unique to each individual. All you need to do to fund is send money. The instructions are already in the email: you just need to make a money transfer to the bank account details, and then of course your wallet is funded and we're automatically able to invest it.

[00:17:01] So it was straightforward. And one impressive thing for us, and I talked about how the MVP is really important in validating your idea, was the numbers. First from the waitlist, then the people that filled in the investor profiling, then the people that were bold enough to fund even without seeing an actual product. Those are the things that gave us the reassurance that we're on the right track.

[00:17:29] So the essence of my sermon is that it's important that we explore a no-code MVP. You don't always have to gather the entire design team, the entire product team, your engineers, and get everybody to build. Some of the benefits of using a no-code MVP: it costs less money, time and energy to build. Really, what does it take to set up a form or a Typeform? It takes no time. And the good thing is that along that process, initially we had these questions we could ask users. But from seeing how users engaged with it, we said, "Okay, looks like with the way the questions are phrased, users don't really understand them properly." So it's very easy to change things and tweak things and rework. Even the calculation that we were using to assign portfolios, we had to change at some point, basically from seeing how users interacted with the MVP.

[00:18:33] And of course a no-code MVP is more flexible, and it's way faster to market. Two excellent examples of no-code MVPs are Dropbox and Buffer. If you read the story of how Dropbox and Buffer launched: for Dropbox, what they did was simply a video illustrating how the product works. That was the MVP. Just a video showing how the product works. And for Buffer, they just made a two-page landing page, and that was it. And of course now there are a lot of tools that you can use to set up landing pages and all those. This is just me exploring, but if you have the opportunity, if you can go that route, it's usually faster, more flexible and easier to launch.

Promoting your MVP and measuring success

[00:19:26] So now that you've launched your MVP, what's next? First off is promoting your MVP. You don't just want to launch and have it sitting somewhere on the shelf where nobody knows they need to actually use it. Just having a good product doesn't mean users will automatically sign up to use it if no one knows about it. Promoting your MVP needs a strategic plan that's unique to your business, product and market. Different strokes for different folks. What works for this team might not necessarily work for your team.

[00:20:04] For us, it was actually somewhat easier, because we already had people that signed up for the waiting list. So it was us just going back to them like, "Yay, we have a product." Well, not an actual product, but here's something you can use to test the product. That was really our major plan for promoting the MVP. Then of course, the existing Chaka users also. We made nice to them [?] and got a lot of people to come on board.

[00:20:35] Hopefully, before launching your MVP, you validated your idea with a test market audience. These could be some of your first beta users. You could also explore the option of having a group of beta users, people that will just test your product. If you don't really want to put word out there, you can actually have a focus group of a first set of users to test in the beta phase.

[00:21:08] The next thing is measuring success. Like I mentioned, the initial idea is really just an assumption. So now that you've launched your MVP, how do you determine that the MVP is successful, that the idea has been validated, and that now is a good time to start putting all of the energy into building the full-fledged product?

[00:21:40] First of all, you could have qualitative measures. You can get narrative or descriptive feedback through surveys, questionnaires or interviews. For us, we rolled out a lot of surveys. But the way we made it fun, it was almost like they were building with us. That was the exciting part, and that was how we were able to get feedback. They were really excited to give feedback, and it was more like, "Okay, our input is really needed in building this, so I'll be really excited to give my honest feedback." You could explore using surveys, questionnaires, or even interviews.

[00:22:22] Because it was fun, by the time we were building the actual product, our designers actually had one-on-ones, especially with repeat funders who had been using the no-code MVP. These were people that were really interested in this. So we had one-on-one interviews just to get ideas and all. So that's one of the ways you can measure success. From feedback, you can see whether the actual users are getting value from this or not.

[00:22:58] Then also quantitative measures. You should track data. Data is key. Numbers don't lie. You need to track data to determine whether your customers find value in your MVP. You can set, of course, KPIs, your key performance indicators. For you, it could be the number of downloads. It could be the number of sign-ups. For us, it was first the number of people that completed the profiling. Then from there, because we don't just want you to stop there, the number of people that actually funded. Then also the number of repeat funders. You fund once, you love it, then you fund again. Those were our key performance indicators. It's important that you set them early in the process so you know what you're looking out for.

[00:23:59] From these numbers you can make inferences. You can make decisions to see if it's actually working as planned or not, or if there are things that you need to change. For example, let's say you have a high download rate but low engagement rates with your product. This could point to problems with the usability of your product and prompt you to investigate further. You're having a lot of sign-ups, but the vast number of people signing up are not really engaging with the product. So you can see there's a magic [?] problem somewhere that you need to look into and solve. It's very important to measure success. It's very important to get feedback. It's very important to track data, track your KPIs. Really track your numbers.

Product-market fit and the road map

[00:24:51] Next was product-market fit. Product-market fit is the number one reason why startups or products succeed. We've all heard that product-market fit drives startup success, and that the lack thereof is what is sitting behind almost every failure. For us, to determine product-market fit, we use a framework designed by Superhuman. I don't know if you know Superhuman. Superhuman is an AI-powered email tool. They have this framework out there. There's an article on it; I have the link here. That was one interesting thing: you don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of tools, a lot of things that can help you in your journey.

[00:25:35] For product-market fit, they have an engine that starts with a survey. The survey has about five to six questions, but the first question is the most important one. It asks: how would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman? In our case, it was if you could no longer use Smart Invest. From there you would have responses like very disappointed, somewhat disappointed and not disappointed. Of course, the not disappointed are not your people. They are not your target audience. Then the very disappointed, these are the ones that have said this product actually gives value. The goal, and I think for Superhuman the benchmark was 40%, is that users who pick very disappointed are 40%. Once you get to that 40% mark, it shows that to some level you've attained product-market fit.

[00:26:34] Then there are also questions that help with audience segmentation, to find supporters and paint the picture of high-expectation customers. Even among the people that say they'll be very disappointed, it's very important to segment the audience and look at the different personas. For us, it was more about looking at their funding numbers: how much do they fund? We could then see that, on average, the bulk of people that actually love the product are in this bracket. So we were able to segment the audience, and of course analyze feedback to see how we can convert on-the-fence users into fanatics.

[00:27:19] Then from feedback you can design your road map. I think one of the questions was, "How can we improve this product for you?" From there, people were able to say, "I think this would be cool, this would be cool." And of course, you won't build everything users ask for. So you can prioritize and see which is a recurring theme in the feedback from customers, and which ones you can fit into your product road map. So you build your road map to make improvements by nailing down what users love and addressing what holds it back.

[00:27:55] And it doesn't stop there. Continuously tracking your product-market fit over time is the most important metric. You really want to see the number of people who would feel very disappointed if they could no longer use your product. That was what we used to track and measure product-market fit, and we actually still use it, because we continuously track it. When users come on board, at a certain stage in their user journey they get the survey, and from there we're able to get feedback.

[00:28:33] The next thing was the product road map. It was easier because, first of all, of course we had ideas of some things that we really wanted to put in the road map. But also from getting feedback from users, and with our PMF survey, which is the primary survey I use when I get feedback from users, we were able to see the current things that quite a number of users are actually requesting. And from there we were able to design our product road map. After the MVP, of course, we're not stopping there, because it was just the really basic features. There are a lot of things that we can actually add to it.

[00:29:17] Of course, start with the product vision. See if the feedback and the requests we're seeing align with the product vision and the product goals. Then, when you get ideas, you need to review and manage the ideas. Then from there, define features and requirements and organize them into releases. After the no-code MVP, from the feedback we got, we were able to fine-tune how we built the actual product. The actual product is live already, but it was easier to build, because we weren't trying to think things through from scratch. We already had something that was working. So it was just a matter of converting that into an actual product and adding one or two things that we'd gotten as feedback from users. So that's pretty much it. Thank you so much for listening.