MVP – What is it and Who to hire?

MVP which stands for minimum viable product is a usually a product that is very simple with minimum features to launch in order to identify if your product idea is of interest to customers or not. As an MVP freelancer, it is my job to not only build MVP apps but also advice companies on how to truly built a simple app.

First let’s start with why you want to launch your app in the most basic simplest way and add features later on. There are a few reasons, but the biggest one is investment. With millions of apps out there, you are faced with the challenge of  being found that’s where ASO (App Search Optimization) comes into play. But even if you are found, it may not be of interest to users, after all thousands of games fail while Angry Bird was the most successful game of all time. Therefore, you never know when an app no matter how brilliant will be successful or not until you launch.

The other reason why you should create a simple app first, is to get users telling you what features they would like. For example, when I built Visited, we never thought it would take off and have over million users without any advertising. It started with a simple idea of counting number of countries a person has visited and a colorful map. Now, the app shows regions, you can mark the experiences such as skiing, and you see stats on top countries your fellow countryman visit. These features came from our user’s request and was something I could not predict at the start of the project.

The other reason MVPs are gaining popularity is the return on investment is much smaller. You can build an app for as little as $10,000 where a full feature app may require $100,000+. If you are going to risk funds on a new app idea, it is better to do so on the cheapest scale possible. As an MVP freelancer, we have a new way of writing an app which would decrease your cost even further by using Flutter a cross device framework, allowing to write one code for both iOS and Android, without the loss of quality that native app development allows for.

So how does one come up with the MPV app idea? This is a much harder question to answer as it requires to scale back the dreams that people have. Therefore, it is often helpful to work with a third party who is not passionate about the idea! Typically an app designer or app freelancer can help. Mobile development agencies, tend to focus on bigger projects and therefore, may not provide you with the feedback your product may need. For example, while it maybe cool to have a drop down which comes up from the bottom of the screen, is it necessary to the app’s basic functionality? Chances are not important in the first pass, but what is important is that it is found on the app store, gets downloaded and feedback is given.

Keep in mind, that every feature has a cost and not every app makes it to even 10,000 downloads. It is critical to learn from your users what they want to see and only invest the minimum required to test your app idea. Finally, if you do have an app idea, and you are interested in building an MVP app, you can hire a professional freelancer to do so. Brian Kayfitz has built many MVPs for himself and his clients, no app is too small for him to work on. Contact him to find out how much it would cost to build an MVP app!