When my father moved us into his house in Ibadan, circa 1997. We had just a room to sleep in and an uncompleted room he converted into a sitting room. My parents and two of my brothers slept in that one room for few more years while he developed the rest of the building. Sometimes I saw passerby marvel at the audacity to move into a two room building in a remote part of the city. I see their eyes glow with excitement as they passed. That building was his minimum viable product. Some neighbors who visited us to greet us and welcome us into the community shared stories about how they came too, how their single rooms became a fully developed building. One of them said “One cannot finish building a house” that was profound. He meant that there would always be something to do on that building, that building is continuous. If that is true so why can’t you just start and build on the way.
There’s a concept in business called MVP. It stands for Minimum Viable Product, it was first introduced by Lean Startup genius Eric Ries. It refers to a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and gather feedback for future development. This approach allows businesses to test their product idea, learn from user responses, and refine their product with minimal resources and effort.
Amazon started as a seller of used college textbooks. Although the company is now selling millions more products (and making billions more dollars), it started with a simple idea of getting books delivered to college kids. This mind-blowing transformation is quite possibly one of the best examples of the Minimum Viable Product principle at work.
Founders Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick took advantage of the idea of an MVP to develop an iPhone-only SMS service called UberCab in San Francisco. They tested the user experience and refined it within the city before they were able to gather venture capital and build the app that services 19 million trips around the world each day.
Sometimes when you want to procrastinate, you look for tools that are not necessarily available. Yes, I am bursting your bubbles. Tools are great, but whatever you think you need right now, that is so important to the extent that you cannot do any valuable thing with what you have at the moment is not a tool, it is a distraction.
Let me give you a simple example, tripods stands are great as a content creator, you definitely need them to make stable videos. But sometimes you do not have the budget for the kind of tripod you need now because you are financially limited. If the story ends there and your need cripples your desire to create video content, then your problem is not a tripod stand, your problem is something deeper. Lack of will, desire, readiness and creativity is the problem.
In the same vein, you must be able to make, smaller, simpler version of your products while you wait for your desired inputs as long as the base resource is available -the base resource for creating any product is your mind. Alternatives are endless, I cannot continue to list the various alternatives available for the gadgets, inputs and resources that is inhibiting people’s dream projects. It seems to me that people habitually picks another distraction on the tray as soon as the one they have expires just to escape taking action. These excuses are very logical and noble, they sometimes comes in form of necessity but they are BOBBY TRAPS.
If you cannot find and use an alternative, you don’t have a need problem. Talent is not a dream, business is not merely an idea. They are active iterations of your desired goal consistent with available resources and capacity. They are action words. There’s a popular quote that says that when people cannot find a way, they find an excuse. That is it.
Evaluate all your pressing projects, your desired aspirations, your dream products and find a way to create a version with just the essential features so your audience and customers can have an experience with the product or service.
Birth that baby. It is long overdue. Vacate the district of excuses. “I want to buy, I want to get, I want to…”there will always be something else to buy. The idea you did not act on for all these years is the reason you are broke, unfulfilled and unhappy. Don’t cover it up blaming people. let’s do something about it.
I have created a close group of doers. People who wants to create a product, start a business, write a book, start a podcast, anything. You have 15 days to create a minimum viable product and move to sharing the product with the world. You also need to pay N10,000 to be a member of this group, which would be refunded to you after 15 days, but you will lose your money to the group if you don’t create an MVP of your product in the said time. My team will review your promise and product and determine if it qualifies against the deadline. I did this so we don’t waste anyone’s precious time.
Minimum viable product don’t have to be the whole product but it has to have essential features to solve core problem for its audience. If you are game, let’s go.
If you are ready. Join the group through this link and let’s break that chain.
https://chat.whatsapp.com/LB8caZx65bDDxdgC9QAvk9
See you in the group and breakthrough from within.
©Abiola Iyiola, 2025
MVPs are a great way to start or validate any idea, I am curious how a semi it seems paid for community would help people get from idea to mvp in 15 days