Whether you’re just leaving school, starting a new business or pursuing a new career, all of us need help and support to get us through tricky times, make tough decisions and guide us towards success – mentors help us do exactly that.
MenteeMe connects mentees with mentors by matching a mentee’s personal and professional interests with skilled mentors who have extensive life experience in those areas.
MenteeMe MVP
First-hand industry experience lead founders Anthony and Anjulie to explore a niche in the market which they are now tapping into with their first MVP. From day one we worked with Anthony and Anjulie to ensure that we built only those (minimum) features that would be sufficient (viable) for testing and validating the concept (product) with users. Once the technical requirements were completely understood, we began, as always, with the UI/UX design phase in which we brought the concept of MenteeMe to life in the form of an InVision prototype. With the designs approved, we moved onto the technical development for the app.
Validated Learning
With the MVP now built, Anthony and Anjulie have begun testing the app on a closed group of potential users. This testing has validated the features that users find most valuable along with identifying those which are less important. Receiving this feedback and validation has lead to a second iteration of the MenteeMe app which includes developing a number of extra features which will provide additional value as indicated in the user feedback.
MenteeMe is an excellent example of a “lean” startup in that they have used their MVP to obtain what Eric Ries calls, validated learning. What this means is that rather than guessing or predicting what users will find most useful or valuable in an app, Anthony and Anjuli have used the MVP to test the concept, gain feedback and learn directly from the users themselves what they find most useful and where the real value lies in the MenteeMe app.
Build-Measure-Learn
The notion of validated learning sits within a larger concept and process, namely the build-measure-learn feedback loop. This process is central to what Eric Ries calls the ‘lean methodology’ and unfolds in the following way:
- Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Measure how users engage with and respond to the product and its core features
- Learn whether the product and its features are in actual fact useful and valuable to users; if users engage and respond positively then great, but if not, then you must learn why they do not find the product useful/valuable and what improvements could be made to the product, if any.
After running the build-measure-learn process, the validated learning that you acquire must then be fed back into the product, leading to the next iteration of the app, i.e. MVP2. Once the necessary changes have been made to MVP2, the entire process can be run again with the aim of acquiring further validated learning.
There is no limit to how many iterations a product can go through and, in fact, even the most well-established app companies are continuously testing and validating new features on their products to provide more value and a better experience for their users.
Like to learn more about MenteeMe and MVPs?
Contact us today by emailing Henry – [email protected]
