Entrepreneurs need a Minimum Viable Mission

How defining your MVM is more important than building an MVP.

Entrepreneurs are visionaries. They want to change the world, and they know how the world will look like once they change it. The problem is always how to get there.

Here’s what normally happens: you experience or see others experience a problem, and then you imagine a world where that problem is solved, and how much nicer life would be then. You come up with an idea for a solution, and only then do you start the building adventure.

Building a product is like climbing the Everest.

Many are not fit for it, and not even all the fit have the persistence for it. Most simply fail. It has been such a tough problem, that Lean Startup practitioners came up with the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept to mitigate building risks: build the smallest possible product that solves the customer’s problem.

The MVP concept has helped many entrepreneurs to make the most out of their limited resources (time and money), but oddly enough there are some MVPs that are simply too big to build. The minimum isn’t minimum enough.

The paradox of an inviable MVP happens when the customer’s problem is too complex or in an evolved stage. Conceptually, the entrepreneur might have figured out perfectly in his head what the problem is and what solution needs to exist. But in practice, building the product is a challenge analogous to fitting an elephant in a car. It’s one complex product being squeezed into one complex problem.

In other words, the entrepreneur does a mistake to makes his mission equivalent to his vision. It’s a very straightforward and honest choice, but if you have real insights on how markets behave, you will know better that you need a smarter strategy.