MVP app development
What is an MVP?
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a tool for testing assumptions – about your app customers, product and market – as quickly and inexpensively as possible. It’s designed to validate key assumptions, test market appetite, and gather early feedback with the least effort and investment required. An MVP is a vehicle for learning, not simply a product release with fewer features.
At its core, an MVP helps you answer one critical question: Have we found an opportunity worth investing in? Rather than building out a full-featured solution based on assumptions, the MVP is focused on learning from real users and improving the product iteratively.
An MVP is not:
- a full production-ready app
- a shortcut to skip design and quality
- a minimal version of your future roadmap.
It is:
- a deliberately scoped release focused on a specific goal
- a structured way to validate customer needs and product-market fit
- a cost-effective way to gain early insights before full-scale investment.
Why develop an MVP?
An MVP provides a practical, low-risk way to begin building your product. You avoid over-investing in unvalidated ideas and instead focus on building with confidence at each step.
Some of the benefits of developing an MVP include:
- Faster time to market: You can begin testing and learning earlier, rather than waiting for a fully built product.
- Early user feedback: Interacting with users sooner allows you to course-correct based on evidence, not guesswork.
- Reduced risk: By validating the core of your product first, you avoid spending on features or solutions that don’t add value.
- Improved decision-making: Real-world usage data helps guide your roadmap, pricing model, and feature priorities.
Whether your goal is to test feasibility, validate desirability, or demonstrate viability to investors or stakeholders, an MVP is a proven method for moving forward with confidence.
What does an MVP include?
We work closely with you to define the scope of your MVP based on your specific goals, audience and product concept. This may include:
- Product strategy: We identify your riskiest assumptions and the evidence needed to validate them.
- Design and prototyping: Our team develops the user experience and interface, often through high-fidelity prototypes.
- Technical architecture: We recommend the right tech stack for the MVP based on long-term goals and short-term constraints.
- Development: We build the functional aspects of your product, focusing on core features needed to test the most important assumptions.
- Deployment and support: If your experiment includes building an initial version, we launch your MVP to your target users, support your early rollout, and monitor feedback and usage.
Every MVP we develop is tailored to your business goals and context. In some cases, the MVP may be a functional app. In others, it may be a no-code prototype, a concierge service, or even a landing page with a waiting list.
How long does it take?
The timeline for MVP development varies depending on the complexity of the product and the type of experiment being conducted.
That said, we typically recommend planning within a range of 4 to 12 weeks for a first release. This allows time for product definition, UX design, development, testing and launch. Some early experiments – such as validating an idea through user interviews or a prototype – can begin in days.
Our priority is to move efficiently without compromising quality, so you can gather valuable feedback and make informed decisions.
Let’s define your MVP
We support founders and teams at different stages and with different motivations. Whether it’s an MVP for a startup app idea, an existing business wanting to digitise or scale an existing product, or somewhere in between – we can help.
We bring the technical expertise, product experience, and design clarity needed to shape your MVP. You bring the insight into your market, audience and problem space.
Together, we can design a learning-focused MVP that saves time, reduces risk and positions your product for long-term success.
Looking for tailored advice for your app project?
We offer free 30 minute consultations to provide you with:
- A clear understanding of what your app project would involve, including a realistic expectation of cost/time
- Insight into the most important things to consider for your project before you proceed
- Recommendations on next steps
We’d love to hear from you.