14 Getting to a minimum viable product with lighthouse customers
This chapter covers
- Can you use your LinkedIn connections to identify lighthouse customers?
- Does your product solve their problems, and what is the MVP that does that?
- What are the product gaps to address from customer interviews before you enter the market?
You are working hard to get into the market and begin bringing in revenue. But you need to nail down a few things before you do that so you can be confident that you have something that solves the big problem you wanted to solve as the premise for starting your new company. The first big step in getting the right product into the right market the right way is to make sure the product is something people in your chosen market will pay for. But you don’t want to build too much product, because that takes more time; and you might not be building “necessary” features, which is a complete waste of time and delays your getting into the market. This anecdote is about how you zero in on what is called a minimum viable product (MVP) for which real customers will pay real money.
We will talk about finding early-adopter customers called lighthouse customers by getting out and talking to the market. We are going to see how you can use resources you already have, such as LinkedIn, in a new way. Once you find a lighthouse customer, you work with them to define just the right set of features that solve their problem and that they consider valuable enough to pay you for.