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Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The Ultimate Guide for Founders

Software
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min reaD
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Jan 31, 2025

Building a Minimum Viable Product starts with a clear product vision that aligns with your business goals and user needs. This vision guides every decision, from identifying core features to designing the user experience. An MVP represents a streamlined version of a founder's software idea, designed to test hypotheses, engage early users, and validate market demand.

This article explores the essence of MVPs, outlines their advantages, and presents advice on creating a successful MVP. We'll also discuss strategies for evaluating an MVP's effectiveness and highlight real-world examples of successful MVPs that have paved the way for today's tech startups.  

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the simplest version of a new product. It addresses core customer needs or solves a specific problem with just enough features and minimal development effort to validate the concept effectively.

The term MVP was coined by Frank Robinson and was popularised by the lean startup methodology described by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup. It was developed to help founders validate their product ideas through early end-user feedback - without requiring substantial investment.

When building an MVP, founders focus on establishing enough core functionality to test market demand accurately. This validation is typically leveraged for a pre-seed capital raise to fund further software development according to a validated product roadmap.

An 'MVP approach' embodies agile software development principles. It focuses resources around a "minimum" release to accelerate the product's entry into the market. 

Key Benefits of MVPs

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) offers tech startups several benefits.

Market Validation

As mentioned, MVPs allow startup product teams to collect customer feedback from early users. By testing the product's market fit and viability, startups can refine their offering based on market demand. 

Iterative Approach

By limiting the scope of a first release and building software through an iterative development approach, MVPs focus agile product teams on creating the minimum required to validate further investment.  

Risk Mitigation

MVPs significantly lower the risk associated with the product development process by limiting capital investment and enabling early testing of assumptions and market viability. This also allows room for strategic pivots, if necessary, helping to protect the interests (and capital) of founders, stakeholders, and investors.

Investor Confidence

By creating an MVP, founders can demonstrate a proof of concept and early user interest, enhancing investor confidence. This dramatically improves a founder's ability to secure pre-seed investment for further software development. 

Cost Effectiveness

By initially developing only core features, MVPs optimise budget allocation and mitigate the risk of unnecessary expenditure on unvalidated product ideas. This ensures that the product development process is cost-effective.

Building an MVP: Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1. Conduct Market Research

Start with initial user research to understand your target market and competitors. Analyse user pains, existing solutions, and market trends to validate your business idea and uncover opportunities for clear differentiation.

Step 2. Define Your Target Audience

Make a conscious decision about who your target audience is and is not going to be. Craft a one-page profile of each audience group, focusing on their shared characteristics, key jobs to be done, and pain points.

Tools like social media analytics can help identify trends and pain points within your audience. By incorporating these insights, you can build detailed personas representing your target audience's key characteristics and behaviours.

Step 3. Refine Your Value Proposition

Based on the key insights for your user research, refine your company's unique value proposition to ensure it addresses real pain points while having a clear point of difference from your competitors.

Step 4. Establish a Product Strategy

Establish a clear product strategy outlining what you want to achieve with your software and how you plan to get there. This is a crucial product management activity as it aligns your software team with business goals, ensuring that resources remain focused on delivering maximum value. 

Step 5. Define MVP Budget & Timeline

Before a product team can confidently define an MVP's features, having a realistic budget and timeline in mind is helpful - even if it's a ballpark. This allows software development teams to define a process that will best allocate their time towards delivering your MVP's core features within your desired timeframe.

Step 6. Create a Product Roadmap

Identify and map your software's essential features in a high-level visual summary. Your product roadmap should highlight the minimum feature set that differentiates your MVP and communicate your top priorities throughout its lifecycle, including post-launch. 

Step 7. Consider Your Business Model

While many MVPs do not generate revenue, it's important to have a view of a business model you believe will work for your startup. Consider when you will aim to start charging customers and look to validate pricing once your MVP is live. 

Step 8. Design Your MVP

During the design process, it's important to continue validating key decisions and de-risking your MVP. Continue user research activities, craft a user journey you feel confident in, and test low-fidelity prototypes where possible. 

It's important to understand that while MVPs are often minimal in their feature set, they don't have to look unpolished - these days, they can't afford to. A modern UI helps your product build trust with early users and tells them that your MVP is worth their time.

Step 9. Build & Launch

Collaborate closely with your software development team, whether in-house or outsourced, to bring your MVP to life. When complete, deploy your MVP and prepare to enter a phase of active learning.

This phase is where your product begins interacting with real users, allowing you to observe usage patterns, collect feedback, and identify opportunities for improvement. Ensure your team is prepared to monitor performance and respond quickly to critical issues during the launch.

How to Measure an MVP's Success

To measure an MVP's success and identify opportunities for improvement, founders and software teams should monitor user behaviour, gather actionable feedback, and iterate continuously based on real-world usage. To effectively evaluate your MVP, focus on quantitative metrics to track performance and qualitative insights to understand user experience.

This improvement cycle is essential for aligning your MVP with user needs and evolving market expectations. You ensure long-term viability by refining your product iteratively and adapting to changing demands. Employing product management best practices throughout this process will help drive sustainable success.

Quantitative Metrics

User Engagement

Key users' interaction with your MVP through metrics like session duration and activity frequency. High engagement signals that users likely find value in your MVP. Use this feedback to refine and optimise your product.

Conversion Rates

The percentage of users who take a desired action (sign up, subscribe, complete a task, etc.) indicates your MVP's effectiveness in motivating users to take action. Poor conversion rates suggest the need for adjustments to your user interface or the overall value proposition.

Retention Rates

The rate at which users return to your MVP is critical for assessing its long-term appeal. Analysing this against your desired behaviour can help you improve the user experience and prioritise new feature sets to boost retention.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The total revenue you realise from a single customer throughout their relationship with your product. High CLV indicates strong user retention and a successful revenue model. While this is helpful, not all MVPs generate revenue - some are focused solely on finding product-market fit.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The total cost associated with acquiring each new customer is calculated by dividing all marketing and sales expenses by the number of new users. Analysing CAC against CLV helps optimise budgets and improve marketing efficiency.

User Growth

The increase in your user base over time shows market interest and the reach of your MVP. Rapid growth is a positive sign of market fit and effective marketing, whether paid or organic.

Activation and Active Users

The number of users who complete your MVP's onboarding process and remain active over a defined period helps to indicate whether your product can sustain interest and is delivering on its initial appeal.

Qualitative Insights

Beta Testing Groups

Beta users offer detailed feedback on your MVP's usability, features, and overall experience before shifting to a focus on customer acquisition. Beta groups can also test specific hypotheses or features, providing focused insights that otherwise might not emerge.

User Surveys & Interviews

Surveys and interviews with your users provide deeper insights into your user experience, revealing potential areas of confusion. This helps when deciding whether to focus on feature enhancement or developing new features.

Industry Benchmarks

Comparing your MVP's metrics with industry averages is another way to understand your performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

Examples of Successful MVPs

Some of the most well-known technology companies perfectly illustrate the path from a minimal viable product to industry disruption. Each of the companies below started with an MVP that focused on addressing a specific need, enabling them to test their market hypotheses, gather critical feedback quickly, and iteratively refine their offering.

Stripe

Stripe's MVP wasn't a polished platform or full-service financial infrastructure but simply a seven-line code snippet. This snippet allowed developers to integrate basic payment processing into their websites. Instead of building a complex ecosystem, Stripe focused on solving one immediate pain point: making online payments easy for developers.

To support this, they prioritised building a developer dashboard and clear documentation before adding extensive payment features, understanding that developer confidence drives adoption more than feature completeness. This lightweight solution allowed Stripe to test its concept and gather feedback directly from early adopter developers while keeping development costs minimal. By starting with this small but impactful feature, Stripe laid the foundation for its expansion into the comprehensive platform it is today.

Another similar approach was Dropbox, which used a laser-focused demo video to showcase its core functionality, attract early adopters, and validate its concept with the least effort.

Airbnb

Airbnb's MVP was as lean as it gets. The founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, created a basic, static website to list their apartment's air mattresses as short-term accommodations during a San Francisco design conference. There was no marketplace, no advanced functionality - just a page with details and a contact form.

Airbnb's adopters, willing to experiment with a novel way of booking accommodations, provided invaluable feedback. This iterative playback loop between the founders and users shaped the platform into what it is today.

This bare-bones approach validated the demand for affordable, alternative accommodations and proved the concept before they invested in building a scalable platform and final product. The key takeaway: even a simple website or landing page can serve as an MVP if it effectively tests your idea.

Spotify

Spotify's MVP wasn't a polished streaming service with millions of songs - it was a basic desktop app with a limited catalogue of licensed tracks. The team relied on user stories to understand the needs of early adopters, focusing on proving one thing: users wanted instant, legal access to music without downloading.

Spotify validated its value proposition by securing licenses for just a handful of songs and ensuring the app delivered on speed and ease of use. The MVP avoided the complexity of building massive catalogues or mobile compatibility and instead focused entirely on the core user experience.

This balance between user experience and copyright holder satisfaction speaks to refining a value proposition that stands out in a competitive market.

Spotify's growth is a testament to its prioritisation of essential features that meet user needs while considering a sustainable business model.

Uber

Uber's MVP was not a global ride-hailing network but a simple app for connecting riders with luxury black cars in San Francisco. The MVP had minimal features - requesting a ride, tracking the driver, and paying for the trip. It served a niche market of people willing to pay a premium for convenience.

This focused approach, rooted in the heart of Silicon Valley, allowed Uber to test its MVP concept in a single city, refine the logistics of matching riders and drivers, and gather feedback before expanding with a more significant product launch or offering lower-cost ride options.

The Cost of Building an MVP

By understanding the various factors that will influence the cost of building an MVP, software startups can better manage their development strategy and capital investment. 

Here's a simple breakdown:

Size & Complexity

The MVP's scope heavily influences its cost. Emphasising minimal but essential features that address vital user needs can streamline development and ensure cost efficiency. This lean approach is fundamental for delivering great work without unnecessary expenditure.

Platforms & Tech Stack

Technology choices like web, iOS, Android, or cross-platform mobile apps affect cost and timeline. Utilising cross-platform development tools can provide a cost-effective way to develop mobile applications that reach a broader user base.

Third-Party Integrations

Weaving in third-party services or APIs introduces additional complexity and potential costs.

However, these integrations are often essential for enhancing functionality and user experience. Early planning and strategically selecting these external components can help avoid unexpected costs.

Development Model

Whether working with freelancers, in-house teams, or partnering with an MVP studio or incubator, each model affects the overall cost.

The right partnership can offer software startups the flexibility, expertise, and scalability necessary.

Regulation & Compliance

Industries like fintech, healthcare, and legal tech often require startups to meet stringent regulations and compliance standards, which can significantly increase costs.

These industries may demand certifications, security measures, and adherence to data privacy laws like GDPR or HIPAA.

Building an MVP with Edition

At Edition, we understand the unique challenges startup founders face and have built our entire business model around providing the right support in a sensible way. We've collaborated with over 100 tech founders and teams around the world.

When it comes to building an MVP, our team's input can span the entire process, from initial idea and market validation to development and launch. We ensure your MVP is technically robust and strategically poised for market success.

We are committed to being the best at what we do, providing the clarity and support early-stage founders need to lay a solid foundation for future growth.

If you want to make your MVP journey clear, straightforward, and successful - let's talk.

Scott Kennedy
Co-Founder & UX Director at Edition
Scott has a rich agency background supporting global brands with digital transformation. Today he’s committed to helping ambitious founders shape tomorrow with technology. Weekends are spent gardening with 90's hip-hop in his ears.
Reid McLeay
UX Designer at Edition
Reid has years of startup experience, is a skilled UX advocate and Webflow expert, and focuses on crafting digital solutions with intuitive experiences. Outside of work, he enjoys time in nature and supporting conservation.

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Software
Discover strategies to create groundbreaking, user-friendly solutions that strike the perfect balance between innovation and usability.
min reaD

Innovative ideas drive the creation of new designs and exciting products that capture our attention. However, without careful consideration of usability, these cutting-edge features may confuse more than they delight.

Usability anchors innovation, ensuring that products are accessible and easy to navigate. Combined with good interaction design, it enables customers to benefit from advanced features without stumbling over complicated interfaces. However, balancing the scales between innovation and usability can be tricky for software teams and their stakeholders.

How do you prioritise a groundbreaking feature over enhancing existing features? How do you cater to customer feedback while still pushing the boundaries of what's possible? Let’s explore how UX design, design thinking, and a user-centred approach can help strike the right balance for your product development.

User-Centred Design

The dance between innovation and usability may seem complicated, but you can successfully choreograph it through a UX approach with user-centred design. Here we pay significant attention to the needs, desires, and constraints of your end-users at each stage of the design process. User experience tools like user stories, also a staple in agile development, are an excellent means to understand and rank features based on user needs.

Customer Feedback

An integral part of user-centred design is collecting customer feedback. You can source this valuable feedback through diverse channels such as customer surveys, interviews, and direct insights. This precious information doesn't just fuel your innovation but also aids in refining usability by highlighting potential user challenges.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is another critical aspect of the user-centred design approach. This allows real users to test the product or service in genuine scenarios. The insights derived from these tests offer a clear understanding of current product usage and potential areas of improvement.

When you bring together qualitative and quantitative data, you get a comprehensive picture of user needs. This panoramic view can guide you in crafting and prioritising your product roadmap. Remember, our journey is not just about adding new features; it's also about fine-tuning existing ones to ensure they meet their potential.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is an innovative approach that goes hand in hand with user-centred design. It's a methodology that encourages a deep understanding of challenges behind user interactions. It promotes empathy, allowing you to put yourself in the user's shoes to gain insights that may not be immediately apparent through traditional usability testing.

Incorporating design thinking into your product design and development process involves several key stages, including empathising with users, defining their pain points, ideating creative solutions, prototyping improvements, and testing these ideas iteratively. This approach fosters a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Striking the Right Balance

Imagine you're on the verge of an incredible software idea. It feels as if you're on a tightrope, with the urge to innovate on one side and the call for usability on the other. Finding equilibrium between these two elements is vital in developing a product that not only caters to customer needs but also pushes the limits of what's achievable in your field.

There’s a potential Catch-22: Give precedence to innovation over usability, and you risk developing a product brimming with state-of-the-art features that 50% of potential customers never find because they never made it through your complex onboarding. Conversely, put usability above innovation, and you run the risk of creating a product that, while user-friendly, lacks unique attributes and fails to set itself apart from its competitors. This balance is at the core of user experience design.

The Kano Model

So, how do you ensure you're focusing on features that bring value to the customer and align with your overarching business goals? A good example is a prioritisation framework, such as the Kano Model.

The Kano model supports product managers in the following ways:

  • Evaluating potential features: It helps assess the importance and appeal of proposed product enhancements from a customer perspective.
  • Categorising features: It provides a framework to classify features based on their value to customers and their distinctiveness in comparison to competitors.
  • Balancing considerations: It promotes an equilibrium between high-value business features and customer demands.
  • Aiding roadmap prioritisation: This systematic method facilitates the process of determining the sequence of product enhancements on the product roadmap.

As the Nielsen Norman Group outlines, The Kano model serves as a particularly effective strategy when factors like internal politics or a deeply ingrained development-centric culture come into play. This model seamlessly integrates UX research into the prioritisation process, making it an imperative step that encourages open discussions surrounding user expectations.

Remember, it's crucial to consider more technical aspects, including technical debt and scalability issues. While it's vital to maintain a laser-sharp focus on meeting customer needs, it's equally important not to overwhelm your product team or accumulate more technical debt than can be efficiently managed.

User Testing & Continuous Improvement

User testing is not a one-time event, but an ongoing commitment to refining and enhancing your product. It shines a spotlight on aspects of your product that might otherwise go unnoticed, playing a critical role in maintaining the equilibrium between innovation and usability.

Emphasising the voice of your users is the core purpose of user testing. It's like holding a mirror to your product and viewing it from a user's point of view. This process incorporates both qualitative data collection methods, such as user feedback and customer surveys, and quantitative ones like tracking user activity metrics and customer satisfaction ratings.

Identifying Mobility Issues

Executing user tests regularly allows for early detection of usability issues within your product's lifecycle. This proactive approach ensures that you can measure the potential impact on existing users before steering your product in the direction of a specific feature request. The objective isn't just to enhance your product but to deliver greater value to your customers.

Validation

Suppose you've gathered a batch of feature requests that resonate with a particular user need. Before dedicating substantial resources and time to these new features, it's vital to validate them. Each product feature should justify its existence based on the value it offers to customers and its alignment with the wider business goals.

Product Roadmap Prioritisation

An additional key aspect of user testing is its contribution to roadmap prioritisation. It can provide actionable data that assist you in sorting your product initiatives based on customer needs, business value, and the required effort. This strategic approach helps you avoid a backlog cluttered with less crucial features, ensuring your product strategy progresses in a structured and balanced way.

The Role of Product Managers

Product managers play a key role in harmonising innovation and usability in software development. They distil customer needs, shape your vision, and navigate product roadmaps to meet user demands and achieve company goals.

Key responsibilities for product managers include:

  • Data Collection: Gathering customer data to shape product roadmaps and prioritise features.
  • Feature Decoding: Deciphering crucial customer feature requests and align them with the company's strategic goals.
  • Feature Prioritisation: Ensuring relevant focus on design and development tasks, they rank feature requests based on potential business value and the required effort.
  • Utilisation of Frameworks: Using systematic prioritisation frameworks to help in the decision-making process.
  • Stakeholder Collaboration: Working closely with key stakeholders such as the sales team and company leadership. Their goal is to align product strategies with broader business objectives.
  • Communicating Product Vision: Articulate the product vision and provide a clear, concise overview of the product roadmap to all stakeholders.
  • Technical Considerations: Taking into account technical elements such as potential technical debt and scalability when introducing or revising features.
  • Product Backlog Management: Managing the product backlog, tracking progress and making necessary roadmap adjustments to stay aligned with the dynamic product strategy.

The role of a product manager, which in early stage startups can often be shared among team members, is essential to any tech company. It involves aligning customer needs with business goals, managing product roadmaps, and promoting continuous improvement. The role demands skills in data analysis, feature prioritisation, and communication with stakeholders. Despite being a demanding role, it's central to delivering a product that is innovative, user-friendly, and drives business success.

Summary

Achieving the fine balance between innovation and usability is key to success. This intricate process involves adopting a user-centred design approach, performing regular user testing, managing risks strategically, and the indispensable role of product managers. By staying tuned to user requirements and evolving market trends, you can create a high-quality innovative software that delivers a user-friendly, intuitive experience—and finds product market fit.

At Edition, we specialise in guiding software companies to align their products with user expectations and business goals. Our ambition is to assist our clients with creating products that not only stand out for the merit of their functionality, but also their intuitive and user-centric focus.

Are you ready to transform your balance of innovation and usability into a competitive edge? Let's work together to realise your vision.

Software
Achieving product-market fit is critical to the success of a technology startup. Read this guide for tips and strategies to help you navigate the journey.
min reaD

Product-market fit (PMF), a term first suggested by Marc Andreessen, transforms your product idea from a concept with little to no validation into a must-have solution. But what is it, and why does it hold such an essential role in the success of technology startups?

Why it Matters

Product-market fit means your product answers the needs of your customers; usually better than other available solutions. Finding this fit require you to understand what your customers truly need, and creating a good product or service that fulfils these needs seamlessly.

How does PMF impact my business?

Increases the chances of a successful product

Products that are well-aligned with their audience's needs generate more positive customer feedback and create excitement. This early momentum can be critical in shaping the future of your product.

Carves out a unique space in the market

With an in-depth understanding of your target audience, you can shape your product or MVP (minimum viable product) in a way that distinguishes itself from others. As Eric Ries tells us in The Lean Startup —the goal is not to focus on building a final product, but to test fundamental business hypotheses. This differentiation of your MVP paired with an approach of continually testing, learning, and adapting, will give you a significant advantage.

Paves the way for customer loyalty

When new customers feel that your product genuinely addresses their needs, they're more likely to stick with it. This loyalty can anchor a solid customer base, increase referrals, and drive your business growth rate.

Decoding Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit might seem like something complex that only the most well-known startups focus on. However, it's an incredibly simple concept. Fundamentally it’s concerned with ensuring your solution answers a distinct problem so well that your target audience is willing to pay for it.

So how do we get there?

There's no template or one-size-fits-all approach to building a new product, because every industry and customer problem within that industry is unique in its own right. However there are some important areas to consider.

Understand your customers’ needs

This goes beyond high-level market research, demographics, and user personas, and involves understanding the specific issues your target audience groups face in order to identify their underserved needs. Customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups are a few great ways to gain these insights. Use this information to create audience profiles for the key user groups you’d like to be using your product. Product managers are typically responsible for overseeing these processes with the support of a design team.

Slack excelled in identifying and addressing a common pain point with their target audience — inefficient communication. They understood that teams needed more than just a messaging tool; they needed a platform that could integrate with other services and streamline existing workflows.

Solve an important problem in a fresh way

Your product should not be a clone of what's already on the market—in order to find success, it needs significant market demand and novel product development. It should offer a solution that competitors haven't thought of. This will help you stand out and attract customers who are looking for a better way to tackle their problem. Designing and building an MVP (minimum viable product) with barebones functionality to gain valuable insights from your customers can really increase the speed at which you find PMF, as long as you have packaged this up in an attractive manner. Too many startups fail due to an unbalanced focus on functionality over usability.

Have a clear advantage over other solutions

This could be advanced technology, affordable pricing, or a superior user experience. It needs to be something that makes your product the number one choice for customers and early adopters (like Uber did with its tech-driven, user-friendly, and cost-effective transportation solution).

Clarity in your value proposition

A value proposition is like an elevator pitch. It is an easy-to-understand argument for why your target customer should choose your business. Your value proposition should clearly explain how a product fills a need, communicate the benefits, and explain why it's better than similar products on the market. Your messaging around this should be uncomplicated, to the point, and easy to grasp.

Signs of Product-Market Fit

Your product is out in the wild. Now you're likely wondering, "Did we hit the mark? Are we in sync with our customers?".

How you can tell if your product has found PMF

People are coming to you

Instead of you chasing them down, customers are heading your way for the first time. This shows that your product has sparked interest and it's seen as something they need.

Customer growth is quick and cheap

You're gaining customers without burning through your marketing budget. This suggests that your product appeals to people and they're happy to part with their cash for it.

Customers stick around

You're not just attracting customers; you're keeping them. They use your product regularly over time, indicating that it continues to meet their needs. A loyal customer base is a priceless asset as you plan to grow and roll out new offerings to your buyer personas.

Thumbs up from users (and experts)

Your product gets rave reviews not just from customers on social media, but across the board from experts in your industry. Positive word of mouth and expert endorsements build a good reputation for your product and can also convince potential customers to give it a try.

Key Metrics for Product-Market Fit

Understanding if your startup fits the market shouldn’t be a guessing game. Your business should adopt concrete, quantitative metrics to help you measure your progress and understand how well your product is resonating with your customers.

Once metrics have been adopted, keep a close eye on them, and ensure insights are clearly understood by your product and marketing teams.

Numbers to watch

Sean Ellis Test

Known as the "40% rule" — if at least 40% of surveyed customers would be "very disappointed" without your product, it indicates a strong market fit. This test offers a quick, quantifiable way to assess the essential value and potential sustainability of your product in the market.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

This tells you how much you spend on average to gain one customer. If it's costing you an arm and a leg to get customers, you might need to revisit your product and/or marketing strategy.

Lifetime value of a customer (LTV)

This is how much profit you expect to make from a customer over the duration they use your product. When your LTV is a lot higher than your CAC, it's a good indication that customers find value in your product.

Churn rate

This is the percentage of customers who stop using your product over a certain period. A high churn rate could mean that your product isn't sticky enough or failing to meet customers' needs over time.

Net promoter score (NPS)

This gauges how likely your customers are to recommend your product to others. A high NPS means your customers love your product enough to tell their friends about it, which is a solid sign of good market fit.

Product-Market Fit Checklist

Achieving product-market fit can feel a lot like assembling a puzzle without a clear reference of what you’re trying to create. It can be tough, but here’s a simple product-market fit checklist to help guide you.

Identify your target market

Know who your ideal customers are, what they need, and how your product can help them.

Solve a real problem

Your product needs to ease a pain point that your target market faces and wants to solve. It has to really matter to them in order to meet a tangible market need.

Stand out from your competitors

Chances are you're not alone in the market. Make sure your product has an edge, something that sets it apart from the competition and maximises your potential market share.

Craft a clear value proposition

Make it clear to your customers why your product is the best choice. Keep it simple, and make sure it speaks to your target market.

Measure product-market fit

Keep an eye on your metrics like CAC, LTV, churn rate, and NPS. They're your progress report, highlighting your retention and how close you are to the holy grail that is product-market fit.

Listen to your customers

Feedback is gold. Hear what your customers have to say, learn from their experiences, and use their insights to refine your product and marketing strategy to excel in customer satisfaction.

Don't fret if you're not ticking off every point right now. Product-market fit is a journey, and each step brings you closer to a product that really clicks with your customers. Keep iterating and you'll get there!

The Journey to Product-Market Fit

Much like a road trip, achieving product-market fit isn't a simple straight line from point A to B. It's an ongoing journey full of twists, turns, and the occasional roadblock. But it's also a journey filled with lessons, achievements, and plenty of growth.

New tech pops up frequently, and customer preferences are shifting with each innovation. Your product roadmap should adapt and evolve with these changes. You need to keep an ear to the ground, stay aware of new trends, and keep fine-tuning your feature set. When adding new features, a/b testing can be extra important when considering reaching PMF.

Remember, to build a successful SaaS company your product doesn't have to be everything to everyone, but it should be something incredible for someone (your target market). Strive to design and build a product they can't imagine living without.

The journey to market fit is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes patience, resilience, and true commitment to your vision. But when you finally achieve PMF, the result is worth every twist, turn, and detour.

At Edition, we're all about helping technology startups in their journey to find product-market fit and scale beyond. No matter what stage you’re at, we've got your back. If you’re building a technology company don't hesitate to reach out and find out how we can join forces to tackle your current design and development challenges.

Startup Advice
Understand why so many tech startups fail and learn how to overcome the challenges.
min reaD

90% of tech startups fail. Even those that start with great ideas and motivated teams. This underscores the challenges of building a technology company. While creativity and ambition are essential, success often hinges on execution, strategic planning, and adaptability. Common issues like a lack of product-market fit, misaligned teams, and flawed business plans are at the heart of too many failed startups.

Why do so many tech startups fail? This article unpacks the common challenges that even the most ambitious ventures face – from inadequate market research and team misalignment to financial missteps and execution flaws. Through practical insights and clear strategies, we aim to empower founders with the knowledge and tools they need to build stronger foundations, make confident decisions, and drive their startups toward success.

Inadequate Market Research

Problem

Inadequate market research is a leading cause of startup failure, with 42% failing due to a lack of market need, according to CB Insights. Many startups prioritise building their product over deeply understanding their audience, relying on assumptions rather than verified insights. This results in solutions that fail to resonate with customers, wasting time, money, and effort.

Effective market research goes beyond understanding the customer—it requires a clear picture of the competitive landscape and evolving market dynamics. Startups that fail to analyse competitors miss opportunities to differentiate, while those relying on outdated data or ignoring market shifts risk falling out of sync with customer expectations. For early-stage startups, these oversights can be particularly damaging, as informed, data-driven decisions are critical to establishing a strong foundation.

Solution

To ensure effective market research, startups should:

  • Engage with their audience: Use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to understand customer needs, behaviours, and pain points.
  • Validate demand early: Test ideas with real users to confirm the problem and solution are valuable.
  • Analyse competitors: Study competitors’ offerings, pricing, and positioning to identify gaps and opportunities.
  • Leverage analytics tools: Platforms like Google Analytics, Firebase, MixPanel and social listening tools can provide valuable insights into consumer behaviour and market trends.
  • Make research continuous: Treat market research as an ongoing process to stay aligned with shifting trends and preferences.

By prioritising market research, startups can make informed decisions, minimise risks, and improve their chances of becoming a successful startup. In the world of entrepreneurship, understanding your market is key to sustainable long-term growth.

Wrong Team

Problem

A strong team is one of the most critical factors for a new business to succeed, yet a weak or misaligned team is among the top reasons startups fail. Misaligned team members, particularly co-founders, often face conflicting visions or incompatible work styles, which leads to inefficiencies and stalled progress. Poor hiring decisions early on can create a lack of focus, a toxic work environment, or significant skill gaps, all of which hinder growth.

Passion also plays a pivotal role. Startup founders who lack genuine enthusiasm for solving their chosen problem will struggle to stay motivated in the long run. This can lead to burnout or a premature pivot away from the original goal. In addition, working with partner agencies that don’t have the necessary skillset will lead to subpar outcomes, wasted resources, and delayed progress.

Solution

To build a cohesive team and avoid these pitfalls, business owners should:

  • Choose co-founders carefully: Prioritise complementary skill sets and shared values. Clearly define roles and responsibilities early to prevent conflict.
  • Hire for cultural and technical fit: Develop a rigorous hiring process to ensure new team members align with the company’s mission and goals.
  • Foster communication and leadership: Build strong communication channels and invest in leadership development to maintain alignment and clarity.
  • Adequately research partner agencies: Conduct thorough due diligence into potential agency partners’ track records, testimonials, and relevant expertise to ensure they meet the startup’s needs.
  • Maintain alignment: Schedule regular check-ins and feedback sessions to address challenges and keep everyone focused on shared objectives.

A well-aligned team increases a startup’s chances of success by fostering collaboration, maintaining focus, and creating a strong ecosystem of support. For startup founders, assembling the right team can be the difference between success and failure.

Lack of Market Demand

Problem

Even the most innovative startup ideas can fail if there’s no genuine demand for them. Many founders overestimate the need for their product, resulting in solutions that don’t resonate with their target audience. This disconnect is often due to inadequate validation of the problem the product is attempting to solve. Without addressing a real, significant need, startups risk alienating potential customers and wasting valuable resources.

CB Insights notes that 42% of startups shut down due to a lack of real market need, making this one of the most common and fatal mistakes in the extremely high startup failure rate. The global pandemic has only amplified these challenges, forcing startups to adapt quickly to shifting consumer behaviours and market dynamics.

Solution

To ensure real market demand, startups should:

  • Validate the problem: Engage directly with potential customers through surveys, interviews, and social media polls to confirm the problem being solved is both real and significant.
  • Start by building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Create a simplified version of the solution to test the market, gather feedback, and refine from there.
  • Iterate based on feedback: Use insights from early adopters to refine features and align the product more closely with user needs.
  • Understand the competition: Research similar products to identify opportunities for differentiation and potential areas of improvement.

By prioritising market validation startups can significantly reduce their risk of failure. Understanding the market and customer needs is not just a step in the process – it’s the foundation for a successful launch and sustainable growth.

Failure to Pivot

Problem

One of the key answers to "Why do startups fail?" lies in their inability to pivot when things aren’t working. Many entrepreneurs view pivoting as a public sign of failure rather than a calculated strategic move. Startups that remain rigid in their plans and blindly ignore market feedback will struggle to find product market fit and ultimately continue down a path that won’t see success.

A well-known example of a successful pivot is Pinterest. Originally launched as Tote, a shopping app for bookmarking products, the founders noticed users preferred collecting and organizing items over making purchases. By focusing on visual discovery and inspiration, they transformed their concept into the globally recognised platform Pinterest is today.

Solution

To embrace flexibility and pivot effectively, startups should:

  • Monitor market feedback closely: Actively listen to user input and track data patterns that suggest the need for changes.
  • Foster a culture of experimentation: Encourage teams to test new ideas and feel comfortable having hard conversations when they’re required.
  • Study successful pivots: Learn from companies like Instagram, Twitter, and Apple, who adjusted their strategies to align with market realities and achieved extraordinary success as a result.
  • Act decisively: When the data indicates a new direction, pivot confidently and ensure clear communication with stakeholders.

By treating flexibility as a key part of their roadmap, startups can stay agile, seize opportunities, and avoid the traps of rigid thinking that often lead to failure.

Poorly Designed Software

Problem

Another common reason many businesses fail in the tech sector is a result of poorly designed software. Many founders prioritise features and functionality or launching quickly at the expense of creating a product that is intuitive, user-friendly, and visually appealing. This leads to confusing interfaces, frustrating user experiences, and high churn rates, especially in highly competitive markets.

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that lacks polish can alienate early adopters – users who might otherwise champion the product and help drive its growth. Neglecting intuitive design and user experience (UX) also prevents startups from establishing a loveable brand identity. Poorly designed software damages customer trust, undermines a product's credibility and reduces retention.

Solution

To create loveable software, startups should:

  • Prioritise intuitive design: Ensure the product is easy to navigate, with clear workflows and visually engaging elements. Usability should always be a core principle of software development.
  • Balance innovation and usability: Avoid feature bloat by solving core user problems effectively without overwhelming them.
  • Invest in UI/UX expertise: Collaborate with world-class designers to ensure the software is both functional and aesthetically appealing.
  • Test iteratively: Conduct usability tests throughout the development process to identify and resolve issues early.
  • Leverage analytics: Use tools like heatmaps and behavioural analytics to understand how users really interact with the software.

Startups that focus on creating highly intuitive, user-centred software build trust and drive retention, ensuring their products stand out and foster long-term loyalty among their audience.

Ineffective Sales & Marketing

Problem

Even with a great product, poor marketing will bring a startup to a standstill. Weak branding, unclear messaging, and poorly optimised websites inevitably fail to attract and convert users at scale. This problem is compounded by business failure rates among startups in their first year, where resources are stretched thin, and inefficient strategies can deplete marketing budgets quickly.

A common mistake startups make is pouring capital into advertising when they aren’t actually ready to scale. Without a strong retention strategy and a results-driven marketing website in place, paid media campaigns burn through budgets without delivering sustainable growth.

Solution

To build an effective sales and marketing strategy, startups should:

  • Clearly communicate their value proposition: Clearly articulate how the product solves user problems or improves their lives to attract a successful business audience.
  • Create a compelling marketing website: Ensure it stands out, is easy to navigate, and has clear calls to action.
  • Balance investment: Carefully consider when capital is best invested in sales and marketing vs other areas such as product development and market validation.
  • Build a community: Foster organic growth by engaging early adopters, influencers, and loyal users who can advocate for the brand.
  • Prioritise retention: Use loyalty programs, personalised email campaigns, and meaningful communication to keep users engaged.
  • Scale advertising strategically: Wait until retention metrics are strong before heavily investing in paid campaigns, ensuring new users are retained.

A thoughtful marketing strategy from the outset lays the groundwork for sustainable growth.

Insufficient Funding

Problem

One of the more obvious reasons startups fail is when they underestimate the capital needed to sustain their business, and have not established enough traction to raise further capital. Poor financial planning, uncontrolled spending, and delayed revenue generation lead to cash flow problems that can cripple operations. Without adequate funding, startups struggle to hire the right talent, invest in marketing, or continue to develop their products – critical areas for success, particularly in the first year or two.

Another common issue is focusing too heavily on securing additional funding without a clear plan for its use. Startups that fail to allocate resources effectively can burn through their venture capital quickly, making little meaningful progress. This mismanagement can harm the company’s valuation and deter future investments from venture capitalists or other stakeholders.

Post-mortems of failed startups frequently cite financial missteps as a primary cause. Misaligned priorities, unexpected expenses, and a lack of liquidity all contribute to funding shortfalls, which are among the top reasons startups shut down.

Solution

To manage funding effectively and avoid financial pitfalls, startups should

  • Create a detailed financial plan: Develop budgets, revenue projections, and timelines to clarify both short- and long-term needs.
  • Seek financial expertise: Engage advisors or consultants to optimise funding strategies and avoid costly mistakes. Companies like Oxygen Advisors have extensive experience specifically helping technology startups and are a great option.
  • Monitor cash flow closely: Regularly track income and expenses to maintain liquidity and avoid unexpected shortages.
  • Prioritise spending wisely: Focus on high-impact areas such as product development, marketing, and customer acquisition.
  • Communicate transparently with investors: Keep stakeholders updated on financial health and progress to build trust and secure future funding rounds.

By managing resources wisely and building a sustainable approach to capital, startups can strengthen their foundations and avoid the financial pitfalls often revealed in post-mortems.

Conclusion

Tech startups face many challenges, but many of the most common reasons for failure can be anticipated and mitigated. From inadequate market research and misaligned teams to poorly designed software and insufficient funding, each issue represents a key opportunity for founders to strengthen their business.

Let’s be honest, startup success requires more than a great idea. Founders must focus on execution, strategic planning, and adaptability to navigate the uncertainties. 

While the path to success is demanding, it is achievable. By learning from others’ mistakes, entrepreneurs can transform and grow their vision into a sustainable and impactful technology company.

If you’re looking for a partner to help shape your startup’s success, Edition’s expertise in design, development, and strategy can support you at every step – let’s talk.

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