tech-company, mobile-apps, lean-startup, launch, chicken-eggSupposing an app aiming to suggest meetings to some people.
One user can create a meeting, others can participate to it.
I built an MVP, (even better than an MVP) and I’m about to launch my app on apple store.
My fear concerns the lack of initial data.
Indeed, the first users won’t see any meetings and might wonder: “oh, there isn’t such a traffic in this app, it should not be famous” => let’s trash it.
Indeed, users don’t really pay attention to the creation date of the app.
Should I create some “faked” complete meetings, in order to show some data to the user acting as examples?
This is a very good question. AN MVP is basically there to validate your idea. If there’s no validation, then the MVP is pretty useless. That’s why most of the time, an MVP will only have core fucntionnality. Additional features are useless at this stage.
If you’re ready to launch the app on the App Store, you should have knowledge on th HIGs and that it should be easy for your users to use and understand the basic functionalities of your app. The lack of initial data should’t be an issue if you’ve tested it out with your target audience.
If you fear the lack of initial data, I suggest guiding your users on creating a meeting upon their first use. If you’re not in a position to do this, populate their possible meetings with fake ones to show them what can be done, etc.
You should have validated this issue before touching a single line of code on Swift.
Source: I’ve mentored in accelerators and currently co-founder in a stealth startup.
This is commonly referred to as "The Chicken and Egg Problem".
You can further look in to The Chicken and Egg Problem through here and here
Yes you may create lots of fake meetings, though I would suggest you to go out and find some real meetings, talk with the organizer and get their feedback on your product while entering their data in the app.
Fake it till you make it. Reddit created dozens of fake profiles to show users how to use Reddit.
Add lots of data. You don’t want to fall into the “empty bar” scenario where everyone comes expecting something great and and when they download the app, there’s nothing .
As another user mentioned, show users how the app should work.
In addition to the things already mentioned in this answer, one more thing you can try is to see if you can partner with some other company to run or suggest meetings for their users. The way it would work is that you can provide a value added service to the partner without them getting involved in the details of the process. This way you can get some initial users those you can either try to convert to your own users or can be used to attract other users.
I think it depends on the core value of your app and the goals of your MVP test.
From your description, it seems like your app has 2 main value propositions.
So I think that your problem is not only that you have nothing to show on your second value proposition but that you can’t offer yet your second value proposition. I have a similar egg-chicken challenge in my startup, Questter. What we have decided to do, is to focus initially on our first value proposition. We also created some real content by ourselves (mostly as a demo).
I don’t think that using false data is a good idea. People notice those things and it make you look unreliable.
You can put the focus on creating meetings by crafting your marketing message (explain users why your solution is the best for creating meetings) and by changing the UI, so no content will not be very noticeable (Maybe by focusing the main screen on creating meetings).
I think that such approach will also be a better test of your MVP because this will tell you whether you have the potential to grow (Because more features and better UI won’t get you traction anyway).
Good Luck
David
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