Minimum Viable Test

In startup world, the first steps to creating a startup is to have a hypothesis, test that hypothesis with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), then see if it sticks. Repeat this process until you find something that works.

Gagan Bayani, Founder of Udemy, suggests that you don’t need a MVP. Instead, you can run a Minimum Viable Test (MVT):

An MVT does not attempt to look like the eventual product. It’s rather a specific test of an assumption that must be true for the business to succeed. In an MVP, you try to simulate the entire car. In an MVT, you are just testing whether the drivetrain is more powerful with an electric engine or a gas one.

This reminds me of Ryan Petersen’s story of how he started Flexport. He created a bunch of landing pages with different ideas to see if anyone signs up. The site that got the most signups was the genesis of what Flexport is today. Here, he didn’t write a single line of code to validate his idea, but rather validated it through signups and landing pages instead.