How can a non-technical person create a Minimum Viable Product?

by Kraettli Lawrence Epperson in Featured

I received this question recently on Quora.com and thought it was interesting one and a question that I have, from time-to-time, pondered myself.

How can a non-technical person create a MVP?

There are several ways for a non-technical person to create an MVP, depending on the funds available, the strength of the product idea, the determination of the founder and the founder’s own technical aptitude.

I’m assuming, based on the nature of your question, that you are building a web app, mobile app or some other kind of software. I am also assuming that you do not yet want to hire full-time employees.

Here are the basic options available for a non-technical founder to create an MVP:

1. Engage a Technical Co-Founder. The first and most obvious solution is to engage a technical co-founder to build the product. This is usually a very good choice. Obviously, you’ll need to give up some ownership and control to attract and keep a serious co-founder, but this will make your product, your company and your chances of success much higher than any other choice you might make. In addition, the ability to attract a technical co-founder is a tangible vote of confidence in your idea from an independent third-party and is a healthy thing for you to do.

2. Hire an Independent Contractor. The second option is to hire an independent technical contractor or firm. You will not receive the level of loyalty and commitment that you would receive from a technical co-founder and the engagement might become expensive. However, if properly scoped and if payment to the contractor is paid upon delivery of milestones, you can successfully use an outside technical contractor to build your MVP.

3. Design a Proof-of-Concept. As a third choice, you might also consider building a “proof-of-concept” rather than an MVP. A proof-of-concept does not have the value of an MVP, but it can be easier to achieve and can serve as an important stepping stone to finding a technical co-founder, outside investors or other stakeholders. These outsiders could then help your MVP development effort by funding, building or even pre-purchasing your product. A proof-of-concept will usually just be a demonstration of some of the key parts of a product and will not be fully working or have all the features necessary to be viable. Some ways to create a proof-of-concept would be to create a graphic design, either yourself or with a contract designer, to explain the use or user-interface for your product. Another would be to use an online prototyping tool to create interactive user interfaces but without back-end functionality. Finally, there are online “app builders” that can be used to design functional web or mobile apps that may be limited in scope, but that can provide a complete, end-to-end user experience. These can be very helpful in creating a working demonstration and helping third parties to understand the vision for your product. (Here are some examples of these kinds of tools: The Best Low-Code Development Platforms of 2018)

4. Teach Yourself a Development Language. Finally, you could teach yourself the rudiments of one of several beginner-friendly software development platforms and languages, and develop the MVP yourself. While this obviously takes longer, requires much more effort and runs some risks, there are huge advantages to learning a single programming language and doing some initial development with that language. There are now many PaaS (platform as a service) providers who specialize in supporting web-based app frameworks based on languages like Python or JavaScript and frameworks like Django, Node.js, React, etc. that make the path from concept to delivery of an MVP much faster and easier today than it was even just a few years ago. There are many online learning resources that are free or very inexpensive and there are numerous frameworks, IDEs and development tools that can make this process achievable for anyone with the time and dedication.

Examples

I have done all four of these to create a minimum viable product, and I will relate an example of each from my experience:

1. Hiring a Technical Co-Founder. Although in several cases I have myself been the technical co-founder as CTO and chief software architect or product manager, when I had the requisite skills and experience, I have also recruited technical co-founders into my companies. These technical co-founders provided hands-on experience and expertise with platforms and languages that I did not know. In one case, I helped to recruit a software developer who had extensive experience as a senior developer at a large corporation that you may have heard of, but wanted to do something new and with greater independence. Finding recruits like this, who have technical achievements and experience, but who desire more opportunities for leadership, innovation and market disruption, can be an ideal fit for your startup and can make great contributions not only to the development of an MVP, but to your entire strategy and effort.

2. Hire a Contractor. I have built MVP products for demonstration and sales purposes using outside contractors multiple times. In one case, I hired an independent contractor who worked directly with me and I paid this developer on an hourly basis. We met and reviewed our progress each day, worked to a specific plan and achieved specific milestones with a roughly agile process. We were able to develop software for a customer to manage a specific workflow process and this software became the basis for a new SaaS product for my company. I have also hired outside contractors on a milestone basis, with some money paid up-front and the bulk of the money paid upon delivery. For smaller projects with very specific deliverables, or projects that can be broken down into specific steps, this can be a successful approach. Obviously, there are risks with outside contractors, including contractors who fail to deliver or deliver poor quality work because they do not expect to have a long-term relationship. That is a subject for a different question, but there are ways to minimize your risk when working with software contractors to build an MVP, and payment upon delivery is definitely the most important of these.

3. Build a Proof-of-Concept. For another company, I had two co-founders and I was the chief technical officer. We had no money and little experience, but had a very big vision. In order to raise our initial round of funding, I sat down and developed an interactive demonstration in plain old HTML and browser-side JavaScript. I did this to help explain to an investor group how our product would work, how users might interact with it and what the functions and goals of the product would be. This demonstration was very successful. The company raised $300,000 at its first angel investor meeting using this demonstration and then raised much more over the next year as the product was delivered. The funding was used to build an industry-leading product that was eventually acquired by a major corporation.

4. Learn a New Language. Early in my career, I was a student intern at an early-stage application hosting company. I was answering the phones and doing basic marketing work for the company, which was well-funded but tiny. I recall being the 5th employee. Some customers requested an application that would automatically collect and distribute to them financial information about public companies from the SEC. There was no product on the market to do this at the time. I decided to take some of my spare time while answering the phones to teach myself the development language that was primarily used by the company and then proceeded, over a period of a couple of months, to write a secure online database application that ran automatic scripts to collect, organize and distribute the SEC data. I had to teach myself the scripting language to collect and parse the data and put it into a database and then had to create the distribution process, user interface, search system, and display system for the financial data. (Fortunately, other than the scripting and data parsing, much of this could be done at the application development level with existing visual tools, rather than requiring a lot of low-level programming!) I had the advantage of existing customer interest in the product and a ready distribution channel. After launch, the product became very popular on the network and made national news when it was written up in PC Magazine as the first Internet application of its kind.

(Photo by picjumbo.com from Pexels)

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Kraettli Lawrence Epperson

Managing Director at JumpPhase Ventures
This blog is dedicated to providing advice, tools and encouragement from one entrepreneur to another. I want to keep this practical and accessible for the new entrepreneur while also providing enough sophistication and depth to prove useful to the successful serial entrepreneur. My target rests somewhere between the garage and the board room, where the work gets done and the hockey stick emerges.