The MVP is Over - Instead, Test the Minimum Adoptable Product

With the speed offered by AI and other technology, it's time to shift focus to the MAP

Does AI make launching a new business faster? Yes and no. Fast tracking MVP building by at ten times the speed does not actually accelerate validation by ten times—because MVP is no longer the most essential game in town.

Why not?

Here's a story that I promise is NOT simple or boring:

Long ago, before you young whippersnappers were around, building things with tech was hard. And expensive. So people who wanted to start new tech businesses more efficiently came up with this thing called Minimum Viable Products.

Instead of building the whole thing, we built just the minimum functional version of the thing to make sure it worked and tested that. Hooray, now the testing, launch, and results journey was way faster, and everyone rejoiced!

We all got so used to this model that we don’t even bother to use the full name anymore. Everyone just builds MVPs all the time as the basic standard best practice.

As tech grew and grew, we also we forgot what the name stood for and why we originally did it that way.

It turns out Minimum VIABLE product was the most valuable simplification back in Ye Old Times because viability was the hardest and riskiest part.

But this has actually not been true for quite some time.

And now with AI, it has completely gone out the window.

So What is the Hardest and Riskiest Part of Starting a New Tech Business?

Today, viability is the straightforward part. It's table stakes. Unless you are working at the cutting edge of research, you are creating predictably viable solutions using existing technological options. So most new companies can build almost anything with the right people.

Instead, the biggest, hardest, riskiest part of starting a new tech business isn't viability anymore: It's ADOPTABILITY.

• Can I get people to pick my solution over the 20 other options?

• Can I get people to overcome the gravity of habit to actually use it?

• Do I have the right value proposition?

• When do they buy it?

• What keeps them coming back?

And the more help we get from AI, the more important these questions get.

That means, that in order to test an new business, we need to replace the MVP with what's ACTUALLY most fundamental right now—the Minimum Adoptable Product.

What Does the MAP Look Like?

1) An Adoptability Prototype that focuses on the context and workflow of purchasing and use, rather than on core functionality.

2) Optimizing for rapid iteration on positioning, value proposition, and behavior change, rather than faster launch cycles.

3) Iteration and experimentation at the outreaching, marketing, and sales level as well as the usage level.

4) Stringing together function with whatever is necessary to test and explore adoptability—some live function, some services, even some judiciously placed roleplaying simulation with users.

5) In depth, high touch debriefing with both adopters and churners.

6) Most of all, cultivating leading metrics for adoptability.

So now that you know this, are you testing for the proper risks?