After this section, you would have gained the skills to validate your MVP. With the knowledge from this stage and after optimizing your product, you now know whether or not your solution or product is a product that people want.
At this point, there are 2 options you can take:
1. After optimizing the few parts of your product, you were able to increase the conversion rate, which also proves that your product is attractive enough that visitors want to become users. At this point, you have successfully validated your MVP. Congratulations! While you should never stop optimizing your Acitvation and Retention. However, now that we know that your product works, you can start growing your customers. Go on and learn some Growth Hacking!
2. You were just unable to convert the users. Your conversion rate is too low, and no matter what you do, your users just won't sign up. Even if they do sign up, they do not use any of the key activities. What's happening here is that you probably have a solution or a MVP that is not attractive enough for your target audience.
What we would suggest now is to go back to Customer Development to relearn about what your customers really want. Do not feel bad! Most companies pivot and succeed with a new tweaked solution. Or, you can email Ed so that we can bounce some ideas around.
All the different types of pivots (From Eric Ries):
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Zoom-in pivot. In this case, what previously was considered a single feature in a product becomes the whole product. This highlights the value of “focus” and “minimum viable product” (MVP), delivered quickly and efficiently.
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Zoom-out pivot. In the reverse situation, sometimes a single feature is insufficient to support a customer set. In this type of pivot, what was considered the whole product becomes a single feature of a much larger product.
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Customer segment pivot. Your product may attract real customers, but not the ones in the original vision. In other words, it solves a real problem, but needs to be positioned for a more appreciative segment, and optimized for that segment.
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Customer need pivot. Early customer feedback indicates that the problem solved is not very important, or money isn’t available to buy. This requires repositioning, or a completely new product, to find a problem worth solving.
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Platform pivot. This refers to a change from an application to a platform, or vice versa. Many founders envision their solution as a platform for future products, but don’t have a single killer application just yet. Most customers buy solutions, not platforms.
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Business architecture pivot. Geoffrey Moore, many years ago, observed that there are two major business architectures: high margin, low volume (complex systems model), or low margin, high volume (volume operations model). You can’t do both at the same time.
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Value capture pivot. This refers to the monetization or revenue model. Changes to the way a startup captures value can have far-reaching consequences for business, product, and marketing strategies. The “free” model doesn’t capture much value.
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Engine of growth pivot. Most startups these days use one of three primary growth engines: the viral, sticky, and paid growth models. Picking the right model can dramatically affect the speed and profitability of growth.
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Channel pivot. In sales terminology, the mechanism by which a company delivers it product to customers is called the sales channel or distribution channel. Channel pivots usually require unique pricing, feature, and competitive positioning adjustments.
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Technology pivot. Sometimes a startup discovers a way to achieve the same solution by using a completely different technology. This is most relevant if the new technology can provide superior price and/or performance to improve competitive posture.