Alejandro Rivas-Micoud says founders use research to justify ideas to investors when they should use it to decide whether to build at all. He separates two MVPs: one that gets users engaged, another that gets them to pay. Understanding who uses versus who pays shapes your whole go-to-market strategy.
I found that most of us and many companies approach research as a validation exercise. Like, this is the project I'm going to do, this is a startup I'm going to do, now let's find the justification for why I'm going to do this, or the justification that I can sell to my investors as to why to do this. What we really should be concentrating on ourselves as founders is, should we do this or should we not do this? I mean, that's really the purpose. Because if you go through startup research question, and secondly, you'll be able to answer that same question to your potential investors. Then, in terms of minimal viable product, I like to suggest that there's two things you should look at. One is the minimum viable product to actually get somebody to spend some time using your product. Without paying you? And the second is, what is the minimum viable product to actually have them pay you some money? Two different things, and you should figure out both of them. Look at different combinations of feature sets and price points, and this goes back to our segment before, um, There's a difference sometimes between who uses and who pays for a product. And that kind of insight is critical in helping you determine what your approach is going to be.
