What’s a MVP?
No, I don’t mean most valuable player; I mean minimum viable product.
Some people call them prototypes, but that’s not quite it either.
A minimum viable product is the bare minimum in functionality that enables a product to be market ready.
A prototype on the other hand is a mockup of a product so that your stakeholders, product development team, and users can see what the product could look like and function.
A prototype isn’t market ready. And I’d argue if it is market ready, then you have a MVP instead.
So why am I talking about this? Because I rarely see prototypes or MVPs in the biological Ag industry. Instead, companies launch panacea products that work in every situation. I believe that because we haven’t been testing our products prior to a full launch, there are too many mediocre biological products on the market.
Why are MVPs important in agriculture?
Product development timelines are long – like multiple years long - in this industry.
So when you add product development to business development, regulatory, commercialization and launch, it could easily take 5-10 years to bring a biological to market.
Furthermore, biologicals have been woefully overinflated when determining their market potential. Collectively, we’ve been downright abysmal in predicting market value. So by launching a MVP, you’ll get a sense of market readiness. It can answer questions like:
Is this still a viable product?
Will we make the money needed to recoup the investment?
Should we re-revaluate our go-to-market strategy for this product or product line?
Lastly, MVPs are not only about efficacy. They should be focused on the whole user experience. An MVP is about collecting user feedback.
What functions do they like, dislike, wish they had?
Is it clogging the irrigation system?
Is there a palatability issue?
Do the farmers not like the color of the powder?
Whatever the feedback happens to be, you want to capture it so you can change it for your 2.0 product.
“A minimum viable product (MVP) is a derisked, initial version of a new product or feature.”
How do you determine the true minimum function of a product?
1. Pick ONE category segment as your focus. If you are creating a vegetable product then you need to pick ONE vegetable as your focus of your MVP. If your functionality list is more than 5-ish items, then make sure you truly have one segment in mind.
2. Talk to a subject matter expert. Sometimes that means talking to the end user. If you’re launching in vegetables, go ask a vegetable grower. If you’re launching a cattle probiotic, go talk to a dairy farmer. Please don’t guess; do the work. And compensate them for their time; they are providing invaluable insights.
3. Include your technical team. This isn’t a commercial decision NOR is it a technical decision. You need both sides involved. The technical side can determine if the requests are feasible. The commercial team can determine if the technical side is trying to add functionality above the minimum. This is a checks and balance system. I think of a seesaw when determining an MVP with the commercial team on one side and the technical team on the other. An MVP is when the seesaw balances perfectly in the middle – enough technical to function and enough functionality to commercialize. Perfect alignment.
How do you get around the hardships of MVPs in agriculture?
This is easy to think about when considering things like consumer-packaged goods or SAAS. I think it gets a little more complicated in biosolutions for agriculture. And I think this is why I rarely see MVP’s in practice. The pathway to commercialization for cropping solutions and animal feed additives are so long with rigorous regulatory requirements, that companies MUST anticipate the needs of the whole product line. If it takes 2 years or more to register in key states, then they must start doing field trial research before an MVP launches. I get that, and it is the reality of these industries.
But because companies are amassing data, they THINK they have enough to launch in a broad sense. But I’m here to say it’s not enough. I promise you that the cost of 2 years of field trials is still far less than the cost of a failed product launch.
Launching in too many segments too early will nickel and dime you to death. I call this death by inertia. Following the field data just because you have it instead of being intentional about the launch plan is a sure-fire way to deplete your runway before any revenue growth.
If this sounds like your current commercialization situation, let’s talk. We can develop a go-to-market strategy aimed at revenue growth that will ultimately fund the expansion of the product line.
If you’d like another resource on what an MVP can and should be, visit this blog by Andrae Washington: What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
