Jason Calacanis argues MVPs don't have to be low-quality. Instead, run cheap experiments: test landing pages for a diet service targeting 30-year-old men, measure sign-up rates, iterate on pricing and regions. Each test builds data you can pitch to VCs.
A lot of founders think MVP has to be this piece of crap that tests something, and you're saying quite the opposite. And, you know, I agree with you, and I've been speaking with various CEOs around the world, they agree with you as well. And I think we're leading a little bit of a movement here, which is don't release crap. Right, the world, and then maybe you want to comment on that just, just to set people straight.
Listen, Lean Startup is a, is a real— there are really great things in Lean Startup around testing ideas. So if you want to test and you have 5 different ideas for a brand name to sell a diet package to, let's say you have it, let's say you have a diet plan for 30-year-old men, just men who are starting to get fat, and you have 5 different names. Yes, make 5 different landing pages that are exactly the same with 5 different names for the logos designed in the same style. Buy 1,000 clicks, or 1,000 impressions rather, from Facebook, 1,000 impressions from Twitter, 1,000 impressions from LinkedIn, and then send people to it and see how many people will sign up for the first month free by giving you their email. Then you'll learn something. Great test. What Lean Startup never says is spend 6 months making one of those products in a shitty fashion and release it into the world and then put a bunch of gasoline on top of it and light it on fire. It says, you know, nurture along and try to test different hypotheses. So let's say you do the 5 and you have 5 different ideas for names and one of them hands down wins. It wins 3 to 1 against the next best competitor. Great. Now you've eliminated that, you know, and now you have something called, you know, Fat No More. Yeah, now let's just say it's Fat No More. Let's say you have fatnomore.com. Then you're worried about the price point. Okay, now you take Fat No More and you put a price point on it. $99 a year, $14.95 a month, $49 lifetime. Or $100 for the first 10 pounds and $1 for each pound after that. Whatever your concepts are, you put those concepts out, you test them again. And not only do you test 5 concepts, you test the 5 concepts against 5 regions of the United States. Maybe, you know, in demographics that have a lower, you know, outside of major cities, people want the cheapest price, $9.95 a month. Maybe in cities they want the $100 plus $1 off. You don't know, so you can try different pricing. Now you eliminate that test, and that is part of storytelling. When you come into a VC and you've run 5 tests like that and that's your first 5 slides, you're building credibility. And like, when we talk about storytelling, what you're trying to do is with each element of the story, you try to build a little bit of credibility.
