saas, launch, mvpA month ago I had a neat SaaS idea, to get my point across I quickly made a very good design of the MVP in Photoshop.. I then asked people to take a survey regarding the product I’m “building”, just to see if people were interested.
I got 112 (targeted) people to take the survey.. here’s what I learned:
75% said they don’t use an application like mine, but they want to start
I got a ton of information regarding what they like about the screenshot, what they don’t like, and what they’d like added…
50% said they’d be willing to pay $3.99/mo if they could have a 1 or 2 week free trial
Of the 112 people 82 added their email in order to be contacted when it is live.
Here’s the thing though, I’ve essentially built my original screenshot. It needs a little polishing but pretty much done… and I feel dissatisfied with it, the main core features are good but not excellent, I don’t think it’s enough to keep a user satisfied. I really want to add an excellent feature before launching to be worth that $3.99 price point. It would probably take me an extra month though.
I’ve also not really added much in terms of what the users wanted to see added, but I have everything they originally saw and liked about the product..
So it is time to launch?
It’s not about excellent, it’s about good-enough and what you can sell. There is no one golden formula to tell when the MVP is ready to launch, but you can determine if it’s close enough by asking yourself some control questions:
If answer to all 3 of them is yes, go for launch.
Then again, perhaps you could consider launching now (or really soon) with what you have for some part of those 82 leads who left you their details without charging for the service (free while in beta, you know the drill). This way you could validate the idea, get real feedback from usage and even form a ring of cohorts to validate further.
For the suggestions you have, prioritize them and if you feel that one or two could be implemented in short order and add great value to the core product and maximize chances of conversion, you can do it too.
This is really hard question to answer, because it usually depends on so many factors we can only guess about. Do whatever feels right is probably the best answer someone could give.
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