A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of your product that lets you test if your product is viable using as minimal features as possible. Once you’ve proven that people want what you’re offering, you can build up to a full-fledged feature list of your product. But remember, that MVP you launch into the world still needs to be technically excellent, with a user experience that will keep people coming back for more.

If you’re just getting started with your product, you may not even realize that you need to build a minimum viable product. That’s why we’re going to share some resources that will help guide you through the process of building MVPs.

Market Analysis

Strategic market analysis is the atom of the MVP. It’s a process that requires you to identify your target audience, understand their needs and wants, then build products or services around those needs and wants.

The more time you spend on this stage, the better off you will be. Here are a few tools that can help you:

• Statista: It is one of the world’s largest statistics portals. Providing you with access to relevant data from over 18,000 sources.
• Google Trends: A classic market research tool that can potentially help you to segment your market and the user’s change of needs gradually.
• Remesh: Do you want to have a live conversation with your audience and get qualitative insights into it? Try this smart AI tool that gives you real-time responses for making confident decisions.
• Dossier AI: No experienced market researchers on board? No problem, Dossier AI can help you deliver hyper-relevant market data with an easy interface. With insightful data, you can build a more validated MVP.
• Google Consumer Survey: When you want answers to your business questions, you need to reach everyday people — not just those who choose to participate in research panels.
• Survey Monkey: Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real-time. SurveyMonkey provides free online questionnaires and survey software.
• Typeform: Create beautiful, next-generation online forms with Typeform, the form & survey builder that makes asking questions easy & human on any device.
• AYTM (Ask Your Target Market) is a Market Intelligence solution and the leading innovator in online Market Research
• Answer The Public: The significant data is what the market users are talking about. Answer the public helps you to understand what to ask the users and structure them into a foundational insight for your MVP
• Qualaroo Analytics tells you what people are doing, Qualaroo website surveys tell you why we should uncover customer insights that can lead to better business results.
• Qualtrics helps you get the insights you need to make data-driven decisions.

Guide: How to conduct market analysis for MVP: Step by step guide (2022)

Competitor Research

The value proposition of your MVP arises from the insights of your competitor research. Here are the tools that can structure the competitor research process into a tangible output.

• Hubspot Competitive Analysis Templates: An effective analysis needs to help you spread out the thoughts into visible data.
• Quick Search – A powerful search engine that aces important touches points such as market gaps, content ideas, SWOT insights, and online reputations.
• Wappalyzer: This allows you to spy on your competition technology stack. It is a firefox add on that enlightens you with the software and technology used by your competitions
• SimilarWeb: Provides a 360 degree competitive analysis of the process, strategies, positioning, customer segments, and frameworks of your competitors.
• Brand24: Discover your competitor’s online strength and brand reputation score with easy sign-up. With the insights, you can get your MVP ahead in the online game.
• Mattermark: You can leverage machine learning, web crawlers, primary sources, and natural language processing to extract data from millions of news articles and websites that have content on your competitors

Guide: What’s a Competitive Analysis & How Do You Conduct One?

Product Hunt

Listing your MVP in product hunt is a fundamental step in product launch. We have the best list of websites where you can list them.

• Startup StashThe Startup Stash is a collection of resources, tools, and services for entrepreneurs. The website is dedicated to helping you build your business successfully by providing the best information available on the Internet.
• Startup Pitch: The ultimate goal is to empower the startup owners with confident pitch decks and set a foundation for the fundraising journey. This platform allows you to list your startup, where you can not only get prospects but also investors too.
• Disborder: Global platform for every entrepreneur to bring their ideas. The platform supports and encourages the startup products as a token of motivation during crisis times such as a pandemic.
• SaaSHub: One-stop market platform to submit your product and watch the community bring its flair. The platform provides categories, ratings, collect feedback, and assists in listing your product
• StackShare: Originally Leanstack, now revamped as Stackshare, focusses more on technology-based applications. The advantage of listing the product here is you will get a lot of organic reach and word-of-mouth leads.
• Serchen: One of the largest online cloud platforms where millions of software are found. The whole platform is driven based on user needs, so chances of getting leads without churn rate are high if you enlist your product here.
• G2: A classic place to not miss. They have strong credibility in shaping many SaaS products from their early product lifecycle to a successful unicorn.

Customer Journey Map

• UXPRESSIA: You can craft personas, give visual life to the customer insights and map them against the product specifications under one roof. It gives real-time team collaboration without redundancy.
• Lucidchart is a visual workspace that combines diagramming, data visualization, and collaboration to accelerate understanding and drive innovation.
• Sketch: A classic user journey map tool. They are the market leaders in offering the best templates for turning your user interviews into insights and later course them with your product development. Additional perk – a large user-driven community providing real-time examples
• Infogram helps you create and publish beautiful visualizations of your real-time data.
• Omnigraffle is another niche tool effective for mapping customer needs. Their templates are called “stencils,” and the selection is surprisingly extensive, with both paid and free options.
• Smaply: Visualize different types of details e.g., storyboards, channels, live data for KPIs, backstage processes, and more using this visual representation software
• Autopilot: Easy and visual marketing software for automating the customer journey.

Guide: Customer Journey Map Guide With Examples

Proof of Concept Tools

Validating the product idea is inevitable. To know what is possible and whatnot, you need a cumulative insight from your project management, market research data, and technology

• Validation Board: You can define customer problem and solution hypotheses, and identify the core assumptions related to these aspects. It validates and rates every step of your MVP.
• Jupyter: A platform to develop open-source software, open standards, and services and computing across dozens of programming languages.
• UXpin allows you to design lifelike interfaces, prototype with built-in interactions, custom interactions, and animations, and customize elements using CSS code.
• Templates for POC Projects
• Guide: Validate your SaaS startup idea step by step

Prototyping Tools

• Figma: All-in-one tool that makes collaboration easy. Bring your UX designers, developers, and anyone else on your product team using cloud hosting.
• Invision: Best for the products that need extra visual success. It is easy to operate around if you are accustomed to Sketch and Figma. Requires less time than your normal prototyping process
• Justinmind: A simple effective prototyping tool with a drag and drop feature. It offers the sophistication of creating easy web or mobile prototypes without the help of designers or developers.
• Thunkable: Helps entrepreneurs to create a robust mobile application without coding knowledge

Guide: Best practices for prototyping

Landing Page

• Swipe Pages: Effortless mobile-optimized landing page builder at an affordable rate. You cannot find a mobile-optimized landing page builder anywhere else.
• Bubble: Easy builder with a simple user interface. It has proven to be a startup’s best friend because of its efficient operational criteria.
• Unbounce: With its powerful smart AI builder, this tool helps to focus on conversions for your MVP at a very early stage itself
• Leadpages: Already looking for ways to store your prospect details, then go for this tool because it comes with a database and an email list builder.
• 5 Second test: Collect real-time feedback from your website visitors. It gives analytics reports on your landing page UX and marketing content.
• Crazyegg: The best heatmap solution for testing out your landing page experience. It gives an in-depth analysis of your customer behaviors and needs.
• Exit Monitor: You can track the visitor’s mouse movement, navigation and identify the sections of your landing page that are not working.

Guide: The definitive guide to the landing page that converts

Testing Your Minimum Viable Product

• Bugherd: Simplest bug tracker-point and click. Capture client feedback, resolve issues and manage projects visually.
• Rollbar: Collects errors that happen in your application, notifies you, and analyzes them so you can debug and fix them.
• Crashlytics: Helps you deliver a mobile experience to every user. Their solution can start stabilizing your MVP and assist you through the entire product development cycle.
• Usersnap: A visual bug tracker for everyone working on a web project. Usersnap improves your product team personnel and client collaboration effortlessly.

Marketing

• io: You can send targeted human messages to your users, by utilizing their unique interactions with your business.
• Branchmetrics: Creates deep links to help you convert web visitors into app users.
• io: A full-stack marketing & sales automation tool supporting your conversions
• ly: You can schedule your customer’s product demo bookings without back and forth emails or overlapping confusion.
• A/B tasty: Looking to run a quick A/B test in your marketing campaigns?
• Veeroll: Simple and easy video-ad creating tool
• Retargeter: You can capture your first-time user’s data and retarget them for the conversion
• Adespresso: When you have trouble managing and analyzing your social media ads, you can use this tool to automate that work for you
• Perfect audience: Ad management tool that focuses more on identifying your target audience, improving your ad conversions, and reducing the cost per acquisition.
• Active Campaign: An all-in-one platform to run ads, manage prospects, send automated emails and integrate everything to your CRM.
• Getstarted: Directories for best deals. You can save your time in identifying top deals on applications for your product marketing.
• com: Helps to analyze the user flow and the communication of the product against your assumptions.

Guide: Successful MVPs Have a Key Component: Marketing Strategy

Conclusion

Building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a term used by entrepreneurs to describe the first version of their product. This is often referred to as the “minimum viable product” or MVP.

The idea behind the concept is that you should only spend time and effort developing features that are absolutely necessary to launch your product.

This means that you shouldn’t waste time and energy working on things that won’t add value to your product. Instead, focus on building the minimum set of features that will allow you to start generating revenue.

As a result, you’ll save yourself a ton of time and energy while still having a fully functional product.

Hopefully, this article has given you plenty of ways to get started and going no matter where you are in the MVP development process.

The post Building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product): Resources and Tools first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

What is a Startup Accelerator?

A startup accelerator is an organization that provides seed funding and mentorship for early-stage startups. The goal of these programs is to accelerate the growth of businesses by providing access to capital, expertise, and networks.

Startup accelerators usually offer funding and other perks like office space, free food, etc. There are many different types of accelerator programs available today. Each one is designed to address a specific type of problem or need. For example, Y Combinator provides startups with money, mentorship, and office space. Techstars offers startups access to mentors and office space. And 500 Startups focuses on providing seed capital to early-stage companies. This list includes all of these types of accelerators, along with others that may not fit into any particular category.

The Most Popular Startup Accelerators in the US

AngelPad

AngelPad was founded in 2010 as a way to help entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground. AngelPad is a seed-stage accelerator program based in NYC and San Francisco. It’s one of the oldest accelerators out there, but it has managed to stay at the forefront of innovation. AngelPad invests $100,000 into each company they fund. Their mentors include successful serial entrepreneurs like Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas. AngelPad works predominantly with enterprise products with their two founders mentoring all the startups personally.

Notable portfolio companies include: Buffer, CoverHound, MoPub, Postmates, Astrid, Drone Deploy, Ribbon, Pipedrive, Rolepoint and Vungle

Website: https://angelpad.com/

MuckerLab

MuckerLab offers capital and support for startups from anywhere in the world. MuckerLab is based in Los Angeles, the next Silicon Valley. MuckerLab helps entrepreneurs achieve market acceptance. As part of MuckerLab, entrepreneurs develop a product, identify customers and users, develop a business model, generate revenue, develop scalable/profitable distribution channels, augment their teams with complementary skills, and raise venture capital from investors. MuckerLab’s average client works with them for about 12 months – although the length of the program can range from 3 to 24 months depending on the company’s needs and progress.

MuckerLab generally invests between $100,000 to $175,00 for an 8-15% equity stake. Capital requirements and the state of the business affect the amount of investment and equity stake.

Notable portfolio companies include: Blueprint Title, Butter make friends, Dropoff, honey (acquired by PayPal), Inspectiv, Involve.ai

Website: https://www.mucker.com/muckerlab-accelerator/

TechStars

The Techstars seed accelerator was founded in Boulder, Colorado, in 2006. With a combined market capitalization of $18.2bn USD, the company had accepted more than 1,600 companies into its programs as of 2019. Less than 1% of over 17,000 applications are accepted on this highly competitive platform.

The current offer from Techstars is $20,000 plus a $100,000 convertible note, lifetime access to the Techstars network, $25,000 to $100,000 in AWS credits, and a three-month accelerator program, which combines mentorship, growth, and investment phases. Techstars, in exchange, receive a 6% common stock.

Notable portfolio companies include: Digital Ocean, SendGrid, Graphic.ly, Murfie, FullContact, Mocavo, Socialthing, Zagster, Next Big Sound

Website: https://www.techstars.com/

University of Chicago NVC

The New Venture Challenge (NVC) was established in 1996 by Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, and is one of the United States’ top accelerator programs. Over 370 startups have graduated from the Polsky Center’s NVC and thousands of jobs have been created. Over $1.2 billion has been invested in NVC startups and more than $8 billion has been raised in mergers and exits.

There are three phases to the accelerator program. Phase I of the program includes attending events hosted by the Polsky Center to learn about entrepreneurship, meet teammates, and generate ideas. The Phase II class will consist of enrolled teams developing a full business plan, practising pitching, and receiving mentorship from experienced investors, coaches and faculty. The NVC Finals will be held in Phase III, when top finalists will compete for one million dollars in cash and prizes, as well as pitch to a panel of investors and judges.

Notable portfolio companies include: Grubhub, Braintree/Venmo, and Simple Mills

Website: https://polsky.uchicago.edu/programs-events/new-venture-challenge/

Alchemist Accelerator

Venture-backed Alchemist Accelerator aims to accelerate the development of early-stage ventures that build enterprise solutions. Alchemist has many celebrities on its mentor panel, including Vinod Khosla (co-founder of Sun Microsystems), Mike Olson (CEO & Co-founder, Cloudera), Elaine Wherry (Co-Founder & CXO, Meebo), and Adam Pisoni (Co-Founder & CTO, Yammer (MSFT)).

With over 3,000 faculty and mentors, and over 5,500 venture investors, Alchemist through its six-month program provides entrepreneurs with opportunities to connect with leading experts and gain exposure to the best resources available. Startups can find their early adopters through Alchemist’s partnerships with large enterprises.

Alchemist generally offers $25k in funding to 25 teams per class. They take 5.0% of equity, which is negotiable for later-stage companies.

Notable portfolio companies include: Creatify, Copyright Delta, Fixtender, Navvisa, Botco.ai, Inanna Fertility

Website: https://www.alchemistaccelerator.com/

Startup Accelerators in India

Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub – Bengaluru

Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub helps remove barriers between founders and Microsoft resources. It provides access to expertise, tools, and support as well as opportunities to connect with peers and industry leaders. Startup founders currently at the inspiration, prototyping and scaling stage are welcome to apply to this program.

Benefits include credits for Azure, Microsoft 365, GitHub Enterprise, Visual Studio Enterprise, Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and access to a rich network of mentors.

Notable Alumni: Miro, Abnormal Security, Qumulo

Website: Apply here

Catalyzer – Hyderabad

Catalyzer Startup Accelerator Program (CSA) is an intensive 101-day startup acceleration program designed specifically for early-stage companies looking to accelerate their business development by leveraging their mentorship network. CSA provides startups with access to mentors from top tier VCs, accelerators, and incubators who are ready to invest their time and expertise in helping them grow. Twice each year, Catalyzer selects between 10 and 20 startups for its Demo Day event. Startup companies selected for incubation receive funding from private investors who provide seed capital, workspace, IT facilities and other services.

If you’re a startup with innovative ideas, you can benefit from access to seed funding, office space, and mentors.

Website: https://www.catalyzer.co/

Amity Innovation Incubator – Noida

Amity Innovation Incubator (AII) is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 and headquartered in Bangalore, India. AII provides incubation facilities to startups across various sectors including e-commerce, healthcare IT, mobile apps, social networking etc. It assists them in building sustainable companies. Amity Innovation Incuba­tor provides a wide variety of support services for entrepreneurs including business planning, company formation, legal & IPR assistance, managerial support, technology support, etc.. You’ll get access to an amazing network of mentors who are willing to help with anything from starting up your own business to improving your existing one! To date, 100+ companies have been incubated by the incubator. All show significant financial and operational growth.

Notable alumni: Circuitsutra Technologies, Apnacircle, Langhar

Website: https://www.amity.edu/aii/

AIM Smart City Accelerator – New Delhi

The AIM Smart City Accelerators are an initiative by the Government of India to develop smart cities across India. They aim to provide solutions and services that improve the quality of life for citizens. This is done through the use of technology and innovation.

The cohort focuses on three key areas within smart cities — health, education, and clean energy. The accelerator provides chosen startups with deep industry connections, strategic mentorship, media exposure, design support, investment support, business acceleration, legal and statutory support, and access to government schemes.

The cohort runs for 20 weeks and to apply to the program, you need to have at least a rough prototype or an early proof of concept. Expansion stage companies may be too large for our purposes.

Notable alumni: Bioman, PadCare Labs, Watsan Envirotech, Freshcut

Website: http://aimsmartcity.com/

TLabs Accelerator

TLabs is both an incubator and a seed fund for India’s Internet and Mobile Technology Startups. They are different from others because they don’t just provide funding; they help companies grow by providing mentorship through their network of successful founders and CEOs. The 16-week accelerator program takes the startup through the various stages of development: hypothesis development, deep validation, strategic directions + traction, and finally, business and financial planning.

Notable alumni: Customer Labs, Cirtru, inshorts

Website: http://tlabs.in/

FAQs

How many startup accelerators are there?

There are over 200 startup accelerators just in the United States. They differ in terms of their size, location, and focus. Some may be focused on a particular industry or sector while others have multiple focuses.

Which one should I choose?

This depends entirely on what you want out of your program. Do you need money? Are you looking for mentors? What kind of connections do you want to make? Where are you located? These questions will help you determine which accelerator would work best for you.

What is the difference between an accelerator and an incubator?

An accelerator provides funding for startups and helps them grow faster by providing mentorship and access to networks. They are usually focused on specific verticals such as healthcare, fintech, etc.

An incubator offers similar services without offering any equity. Instead, they provide space, office amenities, and other resources to startups.

In conclusion, we hope the list & FAQ help you find the right accelerator for your startup. We encourage you to check out all the programs listed above based on your requirements. If you know of any more great programs, please let us know in the comments below.

The post Top Startup Accelerators first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

The first thing to do is make a list of potential investors for your startup company. You may already have some investors in mind, but your list shouldn’t be limited to them. Consider expanding your list to include angel investors, venture capitalists, banks and other financial institutions, friends and family members (if they are willing), private investors, individual investors, or even crowd-funding sites like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. There is no right answer to who you should approach first; it will depend on your detailed business plan, stages of growth and repayment terms.

In this article, we’ve identified fourteen different types of investors, any of which you may encounter in your startup funding process.

1. Seed Funding

A seed investor is a prominent investor who backs a new business that is yet to exceed the threshold of an expensive Series A round. In most cases, they receive a significant percentage of equity in exchange for their funding. In most cases, seed investors are high net-worth individuals or groups that have been involved with successful start-ups before. In recent years, seed investors have been becoming more interested in startups that involve technology and software because compensation is higher than in other industries.

2. Venture Capital Funding

Venture capitalists are people who invest in start-up companies. They are looking for companies with high growth potential. They want to see a company grow into a large corporation. Venture capitalists are willing to put money into a company even though there is not much evidence that the company will succeed.

3. Friends and Family

Friends and Family can be a great way to raise capital for your startup. Friends and family are more likely to give you money because they not only believe in your business, but also because they want you to be successful.

4. Angel Investments

Angel investors are individuals who invest in start-ups in exchange for equity. They are looking for new ideas and products. They are willing to invest in a company before it has been proven to be successful. Angel investors are often friends or family members of the entrepreneur. They may offer to help the entrepreneur get started. They may also provide funding for the first few years of a company’s existence.

5. Incubators

Incubators are organizations that provide financial support to start-up companies. Incubators are usually funded by venture capitalists. They are looking for promising companies to invest in. They are willing to fund a company for several years while it grows.

6. Seed Accelerators

Accelerators are organizations that provide funding to start-up companies for a short period. They are usually funded by venture capital firms. They are looking for innovative companies to invest in. Accelerators are usually funded for one year. They are looking for fast-growing companies. They also provide financial and business-related support to startups to help them grow and develop. They provide businesses with the opportunity to develop their product, market research and networking opportunities. Some accelerators or seed venture capitalists may offer money for a percentage of equity in the company.

7. Online Platforms

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are great tools for raising capital for new ventures. They allow entrepreneurs to reach out directly to their target audience and ask them to invest in their idea. The platform then matches these investors with projects they’re interested in funding. Crowdfunding websites make fundraising easy and accessible for anyone. Entrepreneurs can create campaigns on any topic and run ads to attract backers. Once the campaign reaches its goal, the project owner receives funds within days. It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars through crowdfunding.

8. Private Equity Firms

Equity financing is when you sell shares in your company to investors in exchange for money. It’s an invaluable part of raising capital because it allows you to have access to cash that can be used to fund growth. In addition, equity financing provides a way for investors to get involved early in the life cycle of a startup. This gives them a chance to see how the company performs before they invest their own money.

9. Traditional Business Loan

A startup loan is a type of financing that allows entrepreneurs to borrow money from banks and other financial institutions to fund their businesses. These types of bank loans are usually secured by collateral such as real estate or equipment. This means that the lender has an interest in the property being used as security. The most common types of startup loans include term loans, bridge loans, and mezzanine loans.

10. Venture Debt

This is a type of business loan that starts with a loan from a venture capital firm. It is a loan that can be repaid through the performance of the company, either through equity buyout or by an initial public offering (IPO) of stock on the market. This type of financing may be more appealing to some venture capitalists than traditional loans because it allows them to make money twice: once when they make their investment and again when they sell their shares in the company on the market (should it be successful).

11. SBA Microloans and Microlenders

Microfinance is a financial service that offers small loans to people who are not able to access traditional banking services. It is an effective way to provide microcredit to low-income individuals and families. The World Bank estimates that there is over 1 trillion dollars worth of unserved households in developing countries. By providing these loans, microfinance institutions can help entrepreneurs start businesses, create jobs, and improve their quality of life.

12. Super Angel Investor for Startups

Super Angels are high net worth individuals who invest in early-stage startups. They’re often referred to as “super angels” because they have the resources to invest in multiple startups at once. Super Angels are usually entrepreneurs themselves, so they understand what it takes to build a successful startup. They can be great mentors and advisors, helping you navigate the process of raising capital.

13. Startup Network

The Startup Network is a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting young companies with potential customers, partners, employees, and investors. Their mission is to connect founders with opportunities to grow their businesses. They offer mentorship programs, workshops, networking events, and conferences.

14. Revenue-based Financing

Revenue-based financing (RBF) is a method of raising capital by selling equity in exchange for future revenues. It’s similar to an SBA loan, except that it doesn’t require collateral. Instead, the investor receives a share of the company’s future profits. In return for a portion of revenues, investors will be paid a predetermined percentage until they have repaid multiples of their original investment.

In conclusion, if you want to raise capital for your startup, try considering all of these different options available to you. You may find one option more suitable than another depending on your situation. If you need additional information about any of these methods, feel free to contact us! We’d love to hear from you.

The post 14 Different Ways to Fund Your Startup first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

The Three Most Common Methods of Valuing Startups

When it comes to valuing startups, there are many different methods that people use. Some people value their startup based on how much money they make. Others base it on how much money they spend. Still, others measure it on how fast they grow. But what if you want to value your startup based on something else? What if you wanted to find out exactly how much money you could potentially earn from your startup? Well, here are three common ways to do just that:

Market Multiple Method

The Market Multiple Approach is one of the most popular startup valuation methods. A base multiple is determined by taking into account recent acquisitions on the market that are similar to the startup in question. Based on the base market multiple, the startup is valued.

If chatbot app firms sell for five times their sales, a startup in the same space could be valued similarly. With a five-times multiple in mind, you can value your chatbot app venture based on what real investors are willing to pay while adjusting it up or down for different factors. You would probably get a lower multiple of five if your chatbot app company is at an earlier stage of development than other comparable businesses. This is because investors are taking on more risk. In our opinion, the market multiple method gives a value estimate that’s closest to what investors may be willing to pay.

Discounted Cash Flow

DCF is probably the simplest way to calculate a startup’s value. Basically, it involves taking all future cash flows from the company and discounting them back down to today using a predetermined interest rate. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) is a method of valuing a business based on its expected future cash flows and the time value of money. The approach discounts the total cash flow to the present value using the cost of capital, which is the rate at which a company can borrow. Therefore, the DCF method determines the present value of a business based on the future value of all projected cash flows and the cost of capital.

However, this method has the drawback that the quality of the DCF is determined by the ability of the analyst to anticipate future market conditions accurately and long-term growth rates.

Since projecting sales and earnings beyond a few years requires assumptions about the future, the accuracy of these projections affects the reliability of the results obtained with the discounted cash flow model. In addition, the DCF assumes that the firm will continue operating indefinitely; therefore, any changes in the firm’s financial performance after the initial projection period must be ignored. This assumption makes sense only if the firm is highly profitable and stable over time.

Cost-to-Duplicate Method

This method is useful for startups that aren’t generating revenue yet. It’s also helpful for companies that are growing quickly and need to figure out their valuation. One economic approach to intellectual property is the cost-to-duplicate approach, which bases the value of any given property on the cost it would take for someone to create a similar one.

Physical assets are simply added up to determine their fair market value. Additionally, you can include research and development costs, product prototype costs, and patent costs.

This approach assumes that the value of any company is equal to the price of its physical assets. It does not account, however, for intangible assets like brand recognition or customer loyalty.

How Do I Know Which One Is Right For Me

There isn’t really a right way to do startup valuation. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Some people prefer the discounted cash flow model because it gives them a better idea about where the company might grow. Others may feel comfortable with the enterprise value/earnings ratio because it provides a good sense of whether the company is undervalued or overpriced. Still, others may want to stick with the liquidation preference method because it helps ensure that founders receive some compensation for giving away part ownership of their company. Ultimately, each person will choose whichever method feels most appropriate for his/her situation, which may also be a new innovative model not listed above.

What Are My Options After Startup Valuation

Once you’ve figured out the correct valuation method, you’ll need to decide how many shares you want to sell. Most startups don’t issue enough shares to cover everyone involved in the venture. That means you’ll probably end up having to give up some control of the company. On the flip side, issuing too few shares could leave you shortchanged. Either option is fine but you’ll need to consider the pros and cons of each scenario carefully. Ideally, to get a more accurate evaluation, you should use several evaluation methods.

The Bottom Line

Valuing a startup is a tricky business. There aren’t any easy answers here. These tips should help you avoid common mistakes and help you reach a solid conclusion. Nevertheless, please bear in mind valuations are just guidelines. A valuation is never permanent – or even correct – because there are so many variables that need to be accounted for. Good luck with your Valuation!!!

The post Three Methods For Startup Valuation first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

The various stages of funding a Startup

There are many different kinds of startup funding available for entrepreneurs. Some people prefer to use traditional methods such as loans or grants while others choose more unconventional options. The most effective way to decide which option will work best for you is by understanding what stage your company is in and what needs you have. Here are some examples:

Pre-seed Funding

Pre-seed funding can be used as a means to get your product off the ground. It’s a terrific way to develop your prototype or proof-of-concept, to test your idea, and see if there is any interest from Institutional investors. You should use pre-seed funding wisely to develop your Prototype. Don’t spend all of your money on marketing and advertising. Instead, invest your funds wisely into developing your product as well. This will give you a better return on investment.

Many pre-seed funds come from the founders themselves, their close friends and family: Angels, hence the term Angel funding.

The amount of money that can be raised at this stage is not well known because most of the data on pre-seed funding is relatively not published in the startup funding world.

Seed Funding

Seed funding is available when there is enough evidence to show that the product works well. Investors want to see how much revenue they can generate through sales. They also look at whether the team members know each other well and if they have prior experience in developing a business and how good they are as a team working together. Potential investors at this stage are founders, friends, family, incubators, venture capitalists and others. Angel investors, who often participate in riskier ventures of founders with little track record to show, often provide seed funding because they believe in the entrepreneur and his vision. Seed funding usually comes with an agreement where the investor gets equity in exchange for his/her financial support.

In general, seed funding ranges between $500k-$2 million, depending on the size of the business and the amount of work required to build something like a simple application versus building a Complex Enterprise app. The evaluations would typically range between $3 – $6 million.

Series A Funding

This type of financing happens after the first round of User testing has been completed. Usually, at this stage, the business has proven its business model. Series A funding involves raising additional capital so that the company can expand its operations. At this point, the company needs to prove itself to potential investors that they are a business worth investing. Equity crowdfunding is becoming increasingly popular among early-stage companies looking for Series A funding. In these cases, the company raises small amounts of cash from individual investors instead of large institutional investors.

An average Series A Funding raises $2 – $15 million, usually led by one investor. Getting this one investor becomes key to having more investors interested.

Series B Funding

At this stage, the company has shown strong growth and opportunity for growth with profitability. Most businesses require series B funding before going public. The problems at this stage are building and growing a high-quality team, scaling up advertising, marketing and sales – all of which costs a lot of money. Are you equipped to grow from 1000 users to one million? How about ten?

To stay competitive, the startup must hire excellent talent at a range of roles. These include software engineers, designers, marketers, accountants, lawyers and executives. Funds raised at this stage will primarily be spent towards growing the team.

One report estimates that the average Series B funding raised is $33 million. Companies typically raise between $7 million and $10 million per round. They are valued around between $30 and $60 million.

Series C Funding

The final step in starting a successful business is getting ready to go public. This is also the stage where the product leaves the home country and reaches international markets. Once the company reaches this milestone, it becomes eligible to apply for listing on stock exchanges like Nasdaq. However, most startups don’t reach this level until several years later.

Building a winning product or service requires time, effort and resources. You may need to start out by bootstrapping your startup using savings and personal loans. As your business grows, you might consider seeking outside sources of funding such as angel investors, private equity firms, banks and venture capitalists. These types of investments are more likely to happen once your business has reached certain milestones.

In summary, there are three main stages of fundraising: Seed/Startup; Series A; and Series B/C. Each stage comes with different challenges and opportunities. It takes time to get through each phase successfully. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

In our next article, let’s deep dive into investment, shareholding & other avenues available to raise funds.

The post Startup Funding Stages: A Quick Look first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

Content marketing is a way for startups to establish themselves as thought leaders, thought influencers, and brand advocates while growing their businesses. Content marketing can be used to turn prospects into customers. Content marketing provides a way for startups to gain a competitive advantage, grow their brand, and create a connection with prospects.

Startups use content marketing to engage with target audiences by creating helpful, informative, and valuable content. Content marketing helps startups get in front of their prospects, nurture them, grow their businesses, build existing customers’ loyalty, and enhance their brand image.

One study reported that 66% of startups reported that content was a major growth channel. Another one showed that organizations with a written content marketing strategy to underpin their content marketing campaigns are often the most successful.

In this article, let’s review the three vital components of content marketing: your target audience, valuable content, and promotion methods.

Your Understanding of Your Target Audience

The first step when starting in content marketing is understanding precisely who you’re trying to reach. You need to identify the challenges, needs, and hopes they have for the future. In marketing terms, they call this “content marketing persona development”. Startups could do this through surveys or interviews. Once you’ve identified these characteristics, then you can start developing content around those topics.

You should be able to answer questions like: What problems my target audience is trying to solve? What are the imperfections of existing solutions? What is the awareness level of this persona? Why should someone buy from them instead of their competitor? What problems are they having within their target group? These answers help you develop personas (customer profile groups), so you know exactly how you could create your content to help them.

Once you know your ideal customer, you’ll want to find ways to attract them to your website, especially through…

The Content Your Persona Will Value

After identifying your audience, you’ll want to make sure you provide value to them. The best type of content is information-based rather than promotional. Promotional content doesn’t work well because it tends to be generic and boring. Instead, focus on providing high-quality content about specific issues your audience has. For example, if your product solves an issue, write articles about why that problem exists and how your solution works (better).

The mindset to adopt while creating a piece of content should be that of a “friendly teacher” you (wish you) had in high school. You should inspire, inform, educate and motivate your audience to become the best version of themselves – through the content first, and eventually with your product. You will analyze the content gaps in the market and try to fill them with your own.

There are a variety of content options available: ebooks, white papers, blog articles, workbooks, cheat sheets, checklists, case studies, videos, surveys, live streaming, webinars, infographics, photos, magazines, books, and brochures.

The format you choose depends on your startup goals and budget. If you don’t have much money, consider free resources such as blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc. They tend to be less expensive but still effective at getting attention. On the other hand, if you have some cash to spend, try hiring writers, graphic designers, videographers, editors, and analysts.

How You Promote Your Content

Content promotion is the third key factor in your content marketing campaigns. Without good promotion, no amount of great content will get noticed by anyone. There are many different types of promotions you could run, including social media posts, email blasts, ads, paid search results, SEO, influencer outreach, PR, and even word-of-mouth referrals. Each method requires its own strategy. Let’s look at each briefly.

Social Media Posts: If you haven’t already done so, create a social media page LinkedIn/Facebook page for your brand, there are millions of users using it every day. Make sure you post regularly and keep up with new trends. Also, add links to your site wherever possible. When posting something, always include a link to your homepage. That way, if someone clicks on the link, they’ll come directly to your site.

Email Marketing: You should build a list of email subscribers. Many startup founders attest this to be a highly valuable asset to build as early as you can. The subscribers have enlisted themselves to learn more about your offering, thought leadership and become a customer at some point.

Paid Search Results: Paid search can also be used to promote your content. However, since Google AdWords costs money, only do this after testing several methods first. Try running a few tests where you see whether or not your keywords bring traffic  to your website. After seeing positive results from certain keywords, then move forward with paying for ad space.

Influencers Outreach: Influencers are individuals who have large followings online. These individuals often share their opinions on various topics via Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other platforms. By reaching out to influencers, you may gain access to valuable publicity opportunities. You should know that influencers usually charge fees for sharing information about your product. Be prepared to offer an incentive before asking for help.

PR: Public relations is another form of content promotion. In fact, public relations professionals are sometimes called “content marketers.” PR uses press releases, articles, interviews, blog posts, videos, etc., to generate interest in your company. For example, if you were working on developing a new app, you might want to contact local news outlets to let them know about it. They would likely publish stories about your upcoming release. As long as you provide accurate details, you won’t have much trouble getting coverage.

All of these things combined will improve your chances of being found by potential customers searching for related terms.

In summary, content marketing is a vital part of any successful tech startup. The best thing you can do right now is to start creating some quality content today that could help your target audience. Don’t worry too much about making everything perfect; instead, focus on creating relevant content and becoming an authoritative voice. Your audience will thank you later.

The post Content Marketing for Startups: The Three Critical Factors first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

We can’t hold ourselves from touching our phones for even a moment. Most of us lay in bed scrolling through our Instagram feed at night even though we’re tired. Our smartphones are so addictive that many people have lost control over themselves and become addicted to their devices.

What do the big media corporations know about our brains that make us behave like this? This is where Nir Eyal comes into play. He has developed what he calls the “Hook Model”, which helps you understand why we keep going back to our apps repeatedly.

Once we understand the Hook Model, we can apply the same psychological principles that multi-billion dollar conglomerates use to make their products irresistible to build our own apps and software that could hook our users and make them come back again & again.

Welcome to “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”

Something happens on the device that makes you want to interrupt yourself and go back to the application. It could be a notification flash, ding, vibration, call or an incoming message. Or, since you’re habituated so much, you automatically reach out to your phone and open the app – to see if there’s anything new. This is the first part – the Trigger. The trigger can be either external or internal.

Reflect on all the triggers that your favorite time-killer app has. Next time, before you reach out to your phone, take a pause, become curious and find out what made you seek your phone.

Once you open the app, what do you do? You either open the inbox, press the like button, scroll the Instagram / YouTube feed and so on. You take some tiny, effortless action hoping for a reward like getting likes, seeing a video that could take your mind off a challenging task, a post from your friend, your friend’s comment on another group you’re a part of, etc. That’s the second component of the hook model – The Action.

You might think that these two components don’t matter as long as you’ve got something exciting happening inside the app. But here’s the thing; when you look closely, most applications only offer one type of reward. They give you nothing but positive reinforcement. So after opening the app, you immediately start looking forward to the next interaction. And then another. And another. Your mind is getting primed always to seek the next thing.

Here’s the kicker: your feeds could always be unpredictably surprising. You can’t say exactly what’s coming up next. You’re always wondering. You’re always ready for a pleasant surprise. You’ve just learned about the third critical component – the Variable Rewards.

At the heart of craving, there is a powerful cognitive quirk described by B.F Skinner in the 1950s. The mice would press the lever, and sometimes they’d get a small treat. Other times they’d get large treats, and other times nothing. Unlike the mice that got the same treat every time they pressed the lever, the mice that got variable rewards seemed to press it compulsively.

This is precisely what keeps gamblers glued to slot machines. When they win, they feel good. When they lose, they feel bad. In between, they are constantly seeking the next hit.

So far, we have talked about the three main components of the hook model – the trigger, the action and the reward. Fittingly enough, these social apps are sometimes called “gamification” because they use game mechanics to keep users hooked.

Once we’re hooked, what do we do? Spend our precious energy, time, reputation or even money to improving the system in hopes that we are better off in our future interactions with the system. Consider the onboarding examples of Pinterest, Facebook or LinkedIn. In the case of Facebook, we’re asked to connect our contacts list to easily connect with our friends who are already using the platform.

Once connected, we’re given access to groups where people share interests and activities. If we join any of those groups, we gain access to exclusive content. These actions lead us to more content and information in line with our interests. This is the fourth component of the hook model — the Investment.

This cycle continues and makes us want to optimize our engagement constantly. This is when we become hooked on to the service. Users log in to their platform frequently, take small actions and engage with the platform to improve it constantly, and voluntarily bring in more users like them. Isn’t this a product manager’s delight?

Won’t you want to put your app or product in such a state? Wouldn’t you love to create an experience that hooks customers into wanting to come back again and again? It sounds too good to be true. Well, if that’s not the case today, here’s the secret recipe…

In Chapter 6 of the book, Nir Eyal presents five questions that will show us the way to build a product that hooks users:

1. What do users want? What pain is your product relieving? (Internal trigger)
2. What brings users to your service? (External trigger)
3. What is the most straightforward action users take in anticipation of reward, and how can you simplify your product to make this action easier? (Action)
4. Are users fulfilled by the reward yet left wanting more? (Variable reward)
5. What “bit of work” do users invest in your product? Does it load the next trigger and store value to improve the product with use? (Investment)

We can take each of the questions above and apply them to our products. Let’s start with question 1. What does my user want? The answer may not always be evident at first glance but once we dig deeper, we may find out that something else is going on behind the scenes. For example, if we were building an invoicing app, then we might ask ourselves, “What problem am I solving here? It could be helping people get paid on time or, at a higher level, it could be helping people make more money”.

As for actions and rewards, you could have your users enter the names and URL’s of their clients and in turn, your app could give project ideas to pitch a few clients, depending on their business category and website sections.

Do the process from start to finish, until you get the perfect combination to hook your Users, and we bet you would have built a product that’s worth signing up for, engaging and making a ton of revenues for all the stakeholders.

The post How the “Hook” Model Can Make Your Product Flourish first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

Once your MVP is ready, it’s time to take it to the market. How exactly do you do it? How do you get started to receive feedback? Where should you promote your product? Who should be your initial set of users?

Let’s discuss these questions in detail in this blog article.

Different Types of Product Launches

Hard launch

When you have a big budget for your launch, you could opt for a hard launch. Hard launches are generally reserved for large companies with big reputations. Essentially what you get with a hard launch is a huge marketing push that overwhelms your initial users and your target demographic. This push could be focused on reaching and converting a large number of new users.

However, for an MVP, we recommend what is known as a soft launch.

Soft launch

In a soft launch, you do things the same way you would for a traditional launch, except that you focus more on marketing and less on marketing reach. What we mean by that is that, instead of aiming to spray & hope to reach a lot of people, you intentionally focus on converting your target users one by one. You also adjust your marketing and messaging as you move along.

For example, you can offer free versions of your product for users who could spread the word. If you want to charge users eventually, we always recommend you to have a pricing model right from the beginning. The MVP also helps you test and fine tune the pricing.

Blogs

You could use content marketing to build an audience slowly, especially if you’re trying to establish a passionate community around your business. This will not happen overnight, but it’s an essential part of any startup or business. Ideally, you will start blogging to explain your value proposition from various perspectives long before launching your product. You want to build an audience that will eventually want to buy your product, thus signaling that you are valuable because of your content.

Secure backlinks

You can also get backlinks from other websites that will add to your SEO. Your brand’s credibility is crucial when it comes to search engine rankings. When you finally start selling your product, this will help you rank higher.

Consider digital PR

You could also hire a digital PR company to promote your upcoming product. This company will create some buzz and awareness of your brand, which will offer you some valuable publicity before the product is even released.

These are just a few ideas for soft-launching your product and building traction before the launch.

Factors of a Perfect MVP Launch

There are a few factors that can make or break your startup. Of course, the things that will make an excellent success also depend on a lot of other aspects.

A scaled-down marketing approach

As we discussed earlier, your number one priority is to establish the value of your offering to a tiny slice of your audience. You would want to clarify your value proposition to a small number of people who can give you unbiased feedback.

You could do this by sending out emails, sending messages on social media sites, someone could tell their friends about it, or eventually, you can offer it up for free.

Remember this aphorism: “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” Take your time and make sure to get the details and steps right. Don’t rush the process; each step will take time, and you don’t want to rush it because you will probably make mistakes along the way.

Limiting your reach to a few target users will help you course-correct early on, which will make the process of effectively scaling easier later on. It will also help you avoid being overwhelmed by product requests once you have a larger user base.

A benefit-oriented pitch

Use a benefit-oriented pitch that addresses the deepest, acutest pain point of your audience. It’s a bit difficult to describe aptly, but it is essential to selling your users the benefits of using your product. You would have already created a value proposition for your product, so now you can talk about how it will solve users’ pain points.

One easy trap many startups fall into is, instead of selling the benefits, they tend to sell the underlying technology – the secret sauce that makes it all happen. That approach can lead to your product being placed far away from their wants and needs if your customers don’t make the connection.

A benefit-oriented pitch is a smart way to identify the opportunities and the reasons why people would buy your product. You can then use that information to launch your product into the market.

The most effective way to do this is by creating an explainer video that explains what your product does, why it’s useful, and how it will help solve problems.

The Metrics

Your launch plan should include metrics that help you understand your audience’s behavior. It’s critical to collect information about how people are using your product.

Tools like Google Analytics make it easy to see how users interact with your site and offer you a wealth of data about your audience and customer behavior. You can set goals, track conversion rates, and see what people are interested in on your website.

Specifically, you would want to measure the following:

Traffic: This is the number of visits to your website or app downloads each day. Ideally, you would want to be receiving a steady number of visitors on a consistent basis.

Registrations: You also need to measure the number of users who actually create an account on your website or app to start using it.

The number of active users: This is the number of active users who are still using your product.

Retention rate: This is the percentage of people who keep using your product after some period of time. You want this number to be very high or at least higher than 50%.

Paying users: Finally, you want to measure the number of people who are willing to pay for your product.

In conclusion, we would like to say that launching an MVP has its own challenges, but if done correctly, will help you position your product better than ever before. And possibly get you more customers within a shorter amount of time.

In the end, all you need to do is get your product in front of people and get them to try it. Then listen. Adapting quickly is a real key to success.

The post Minimum Viable Launch: How to Launch Your MVP first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

Product Hunt’s MVP

When Product Hunt’s founder Ryan Hoover wanted to build a platform where users can share their favorite digital products and discuss them with others – something like Dribbble for the product people, he was not sure if it was something others wanted, so he didn’t set out to build out the entire platform, which could take many weeks, if not months, of effort. This was a perfect candidate for the MVP approach.

Using a link sharing tool called LinkedIn, he created a group of his startup friends. Any member of this group could submit a software product that they liked. At the end of the day, a digest email was sent to all the members.

All it took Ryan to set up his MVP was a massive… well, no, twenty minutes.

Within weeks, Product Hunt attracted over 170 people who wanted to share and discover excellent digital products.

Today, Product Hunt ranks among the top 15,000 websites in the world. In the Communications, Electronics and Technology, it hovers around the 300th position. It’s no mean feat.

Key lesson: The critical thing is that you don’t need to spend too much time building one. You just need enough to get your idea off the ground – even if it means hacking together available solutions. Once you’ve gained traction, you can start adding features on top of the core functionality.

Airbnb’s One-page MVP

Airbnb is a perfect example of how solving a personal problem could become a business opportunity. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, former schoolmates and then roommates, found it hard to pay their apartment rent in San Francisco.

Foreseeing that hotel rooms would be overbooked for the impending IDSA Conference, they decide to rent out their airbed in their apartment. They set up a simple website with a few pictures of their place and displayed the contact info and address.

To their surprise, they got three paying customers who paid $240. They repeated the same experiment during the 2008 Democratic National Convention and 2008 SXSW.

After plenty of such experiments, and fresh approaches to getting the word out to prospects, Airbnb has disrupted the entire hotel industry. The online phenomenon has over 7 million listings by 2.9 million hosts worldwide in 2021, 14,000 new hosts join the platform each month, and the company was worth $38 billion.

Key lesson: Sometimes a tiny crack in the wall is enough to make a big entrance. Tease your capabilities and offer something small in return, and you’ll find yourself in a position to provide more value over time.

Zappos’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ MVP

Nick Swinmurn wanted to check if people would buy without trying them on – a revolutionary, even crazy, proposition at that time. He set up a website to sell shoes, but he had zero inventory. What he would do is go to the store, take pictures of shoes and upload them to his website. When someone ordered a pair, he would run back to the store, purchase it and ship it.

Zappos was a perfect example of the Wizard of Oz way of building an MVP: Make everything look normal on the outside, but everything inside is manually operated by humans. And bring in technology only when the prior steps are validated.

Zappos is known for doing some crazily innovative things: 365 day returns, offering new hires one month’s salary to leave the job, and instituting a company culture interview in addition to the business interview.

Sounds like Zappos found a great way to build a solid business. Eventually, Zappos was acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion and is now worth more than a few billion dollars today.

Key lesson: The Wizard of Oz MVP is perfect when you’re looking to validate a concept or product before investing any money into it. It also works well when you want to test whether there will be demand for what you have built. If you think you might not succeed, this approach gives you a chance to fail fast and move on to another project.

Uber’s Software Prototype MVP

After their recent exits from their previous companies, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, wanted to do something about the high prices and absence of affordable alternatives to city cabs. They set out to invent a business model whereby San Francisco locals hire a black cab from their iPhones, and pay for it without cash.

The first version of Ubercab was a PHP application that was mobile responsive – bear in mind that it was not a mobile app! There was no way to download it on the App store. To get access to the service, one had to mail the founders. In the early versions, you couldn’t pay from within the app. All the orders were manually managed by the company themselves.

The cabs were all their own.

Once they broke the limits of this model, they hired third-party cabs and eventually taught the drivers to manage the orders.

Now Uber and the model they invented are an international phenomenon with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Key lesson: This story shows how “less is more” can be the formula to launch a successful startup. You need to start somewhere, and sometimes just starting means launching a prototype with very limited set of features. Don’t worry too much about perfection; focus instead on getting something working. Once you’ve got something going, then you can iterate and improve upon it –just like Uber.

These are only some of the successful examples of how innovatively these founders came up with their own version of Minimum Viable Products. There are hundreds more. These four should serve us well as inspiration, when starting our own projects.

If you are interested  to know more about the concept of Minimum Viable Product, check out our other articles on this blog.

On the other hand, if you need help coming up with your own flavor of MVP or picking the suitable one, please reach out to us at support@merkatintellekt.com.

The post Four Ridiculously Barebone MVPs that Have Become Phenomena first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.

But how do you decide which ones to prioritize? How do you know if a feature is worth adding to your MVP?

In this article, we are going to share three ways to prioritize features in your MVP. These are based on real-world examples.

Benefits of Prioritizing Features in Your MVP

First, let’s remind ourselves of the business benefits of prioritizing.

• You can focus more time and energy on matters most for your business.
• It helps you build better products faster by focusing on only those things that matter.
• By doing this, you will not waste time and resources on unnecessary features.

Now, let’s look at some reasons why you should not prioritize certain features:

• If they don’t add value to users’ lives.
• They are too expensive to implement.
• The market doesn’t need them yet.
• There aren’t enough people using them right now.
• Users won’t pay money for them.

There are plenty of methods that help you determine what features to include in your MVP. But before we get into it, here are two questions to ask yourself:

1) What problem does my current solution solve?

2) Is there any way to make it even easier for someone else to solve this same problem?

MoSCoW Matrix Prioritization Technique

Dai Clegg developed the MoSCoW matrix technique in the rapid application development project he was a part of. The aim is to arrive at features that offer the most significant and most immediate benefits.

MoSCoW is an abbreviation for Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have features.

Here all the desired features are listed out along with their relative importance. Then each one gets tagged as either (M, S, C or W) according to its importance. This gives us our first step towards prioritizing features.

When time is not sufficient to complete all the features, the team will aim to finish the Must have and Should have features and leave out the Could have, and of course, the Won’t have parts. Even if this small set wasn’t completed on time, the team would focus only on the Must-have features.

Pros of MoSCoW prioritization

– It allows you to quickly identify what must be done before moving onto other priorities.

– You get to see clearly where your efforts lie.

Cons of MoSCoW prioritizations

If you’re working alone, then you may spend hours trying to figure out what can be left out without compromising the product’s functionality.

– This method also assumes that every single feature has equal weight. But often, some features are much harder than others to develop.

When to use MoSCoW prioritization

If you want to start with something simple but still effective, then go ahead and try MoSCoW. The MoSCoW technique is excellent for small and simple products that don’t have many features. However, if you plan to launch a complex app with lots of features, you may want to consider another approach like the following.

The Kano Model Prioritization Technique

The Kano Model is based on three types of features: foundational features that are a must-have (for example, clean rooms in a hotel); performance features, which are aimed at enhancing the experience (for example, a desk with a chair); and exciting features, which make the customer delighted that they want to talk about it (the same room overlooking the ocean).

Pros of the Kano Model

– You map the product features based on their utility to the customer. This makes marketing easier.

– You involve the customer in product development right from the beginning.

– Can be applied to any stage of the product lifecycle.

– Makes it easy to achieve product-market fit early in the project.

– Helps in setting a rock-solid roadmap.

Cons of the Kano Model

– Potential features need to be known well ahead of time.

– The analysis can be time-consuming, expensive and exhausting.

– Since it’s a user-centred approach, it’s easy to overlook essential features that the user did not consider.

When to use the Kano Model Prioritization Technique

This model works best for startups looking to build a new product rather than improving upon existing ones. Also, since most companies already know how their customers behave, this technique will help them better understand what features should be included in their product.

Effort and Impact Prioritization Technique

The effort and impact matrix is a 2D visual that helps teams understand how hard different features will be to implement and whether those features are worth implementing.

It works best when there are two dimensions – Efforts and Impacts. Each cell represents an individual feature. To fill up the cells, you should assign values to both Efforts and Impacts.

Here you evaluate each feature, whether it’s easy/hard to implement and offers low/high impact. You then map it on a 2D graph like the above. You can either do this manually or automate it using tools such as Trello.

Pros of Effort & Impact Matrix

– Allows you to prioritize features easily.

– Easy to visualize and share across stakeholders.

– An excellent way to communicate with customers.

– Easily understood by non-technical people.

Cons of Effort & Impact Matrices

– Requires more resources to create one.

– Not suitable for large projects.

When to use the Effort & Impact Prioritization Technique

This is an excellent method to identify low-hanging fruits in your feature set. Use this method when your team has limited resources and needs to choose between multiple features. It also works very well for smaller projects where you’re trying to decide between several ideas.

Summary

Feature prioritization is essential for every startup because you won’t have a chance to succeed without knowing what users want. There are many ways to do so, but these three methods are the easiest and fastest ways to get started. If you’re still struggling with deciding which features to include in your MVP, please reach out to us.

The post Three Ways to Prioritize Features in Your MVP first appeared on Merkat Intellekt.