So your startup just launched its MVP. Now what?
2023 for People Calendar was all about creating something tangible. Just the core ingredients and building blocks in place that allow iterating on, both from a technical, product and business level. Not just MVP for the product, but also for, say, the website and the code and processes required to run that product and website.
These ingredients include:
- A name, brand, and main message and problem to solve.
- A functioning public web site.
- A functioning web browser app.
- A functioning mobile app.
- A mechanism for customers to pay me money.
- A tech stack and hosting that supports running these ingredients
- Basic knowledge, dev and testing environments with surrounding tooling to create and build on all these elements.
- Basic knowledge, tooling and documentation to deploy and release all these elements.
- A basic/first version of many features and flows that give a stab at delivering on the promise for users.
However, on all levels, each of these elements, while tangible, is in a pretty rough state: bugs, confusing flows with poor ux, unrealistic pricing, basic mechanisms and aspects not being leveraged…
So 2024 will be less about inventing and building new features, and more about getting more solid in them. So things like:
- a cleaner, more consistent, simpler-to-work-with code base and local dev tooling
- known bugs/issues resolved
- easier and more automated deploys and releases
- adding core elements for a mobile experience: notifications, an android version of the app…
- getting a first handle on ‘generating inflow of new users’
- better monitization, both in pricing, communication, and just the flow(s) themselves
- improving the UX both in onboarding and using the app
- Better tracking/understanding of users, and better and more direct communication channels to learn from
- … and much more like this.
… In short, all those things that are important for a project’s success besides product and features :)
Happy new year!