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Welcome to the class! Should you build an MVP? If you have an idea you'd like to test, then yes, probably.
MVPs work off of the Lean Startup Framework. If you don't know what that is, Evan's about to tell you.
Now that you understand what Lean is, it's time to understand how to use it to test your ideas. In this lesson, we cover all the things you have to keep in your mind(set) as you build an MVP.
So what does an MVP actually look like? We break down the components of the Minimum Viable Product you're going to be testing throughout the course. Plus, a little hockey action.
Not all MVPs are created equal. In this lesson, Evan goes over the different kinds of MVPs out there, and why each might be a good fit for you. Now with more monkeys!
Whether you see stairs or steps, in this lesson, Evan explains the unique stages through which your MVP will grow and go through testing.
You can't actually MVP all of your ideas. So how do you figure out which one to start with? Enter the Sniff Test, an easy set of metrics that will help you judge your ideas. With math!
Keep following your nose. We continue the sniff test to find out what ideas are worth turning into an MVP.
In this lesson, we introduce the example MVP Evan is going to take from idea to completion in the class: a gift basket subscription service.
Before we actually make an MVP, we make a prediction, or the hypothesis, that the MVP will actually test.
In this video we take our MVP hypotheses and refine it into lean, mean, accounting-for-all-experimental-variable machines.
As we shape our MVPs, it's important to consider the risks and assumptions inherent in the idea we're testing. In this video, we do just that.
In order to run an MVP experiment, you have to have a bar for success. In this video, we discuss how to find the minimum criteria your MVP's going to have to meet.
If you build an MVP, will people come? Only if you have a firm idea of who your potential customers are and how to sell it to them. In this lesson, Evan shows you how to find them.
Now that you have an idea of some potential customer groups, it's time to refine that down to the people you're actually going to experiment on. Promise it's less weird than it sounds.
Oddly enough, the first step in interviewing real people about your product is creating fake people. In this lesson, Evan takes us through how to build a customer persona and why they're important.
Now that you have your research on your customer group, it's time to actually create your persona. Evan breaks down how he did this for AirBasket, and created Barbara.
In this section, before we launch our MVP, we focus on doing a competitive analysis of our prospective market, to see if our ideas can survive in the wild.
In this video, we work on searching for potential competitors - systematically.
Still having trouble finding competitors? Evan gives you some additional techniques for Google-fu.
In this video, Evan shows us how to take our list of competitors and break them up by the level of competition they actually pose - so you can pick on someone your own size.
What are the pieces of a competitive analysis? In this video, Evan goes over all the information you're going to need to find on your competitors.
We dive into the work of spying on competitors with two great tools, SEMrush and SpyFu.
About the rest of the story...Evan takes you through how to pick up additional information from your competitors' about pages, and more.
It's judgment day. In this lesson, we process the data we've collected about our competitors and assess both them and the market conditions we'd enter to compete with them.
The next stage of the MVP is gathering information from customer interviews. Getting validation from people: should be easy, right?
To start setting up customer interviews for our MVP, we set up a system to manage all of the potential customers that we're going to reach out to.
Finding potential interviewees is daunting in the abstract, but there are a few key spots where you're likely to find people willing to talk about your MVP. In this lesson, Evan shows them to you.
In this next set of videos, we cover how to find groups of people to talk to about your MVP. First up: people who have the problem you're solving.
Keep searching for potential MVP interviewees through influencers, or people who are already talking about the problem you're solving anyway.
Finally, if you still need to reach out to people, we cover how to tempt competitors' customers and find normal(ish) people on internet forums.
Brevity is the soul of wit/cold messaging people you want to interview.
In this video, Evan shows us how to take all of the leads we've gathered and intelligently send out templates en mass. No need to be a mailchimp.
Now that you've made contact with your interviewees, it's time to prepare what you're going to ask. We cover the four stages of a customer interview, and acting like a normal human being.
Evan conducts a sample customer interview so you can see how it looks with Mattan. Also, a gong.
The next stage in creating our MVP is creating a pitch experiment. Plus, underwear, venn diagrams, and pokémon.
In this video, Evan breaks down what constitutes landing pages and squeeze pages, and the main elements they share.
Watch for this video's astounding secret to creating great headlines.
In this video, we get a little more in depth on what makes a good headline and how to exploit the feelings of others. It's not as weird as it sounds, promise.
We move onto the call to action button, where bigger is definitely better.
To complete all the content you need for your landing page, we choose the features and benefits worth focusing on.
Evan reveals the levels of success your pitch experiment can achieve. Spoiler: there's more than one.
In this lesson, Evan explains the differences between subjective and objective data, and why you should gather both as you run your pitch experiment.
We actually start building our pitch experiments. With launchrock and a little luck, you've have people interested in your product in no time.
We continue setting up and adjusting the landing page, adding in additional features to capture subjective data.
Evan quickly takes us through tawk.to's functionality and how to best use it on your landing page.
Now it's time for you to create your own launchrock page.
Duct Tape marketing, by any other name, is just as cheap.
Before we do marketing of any kind, an important disclaimer about not corrupting your data set with people who know and/or like you.
In this lesson, we cover an alternative to going out their and pitching your experiment yourself. Plus amateur ninjas, political campaigns, and the moon landing.
The quest to find Barbara starts with online community's, and specifically the Internet's own front page, Reddit.
Next, we cover come startup-specific venues for driving traffic to your landing page.
To be extra-sure you get 100 visitors to your landing page, we get a little manual, find some relevant blogs, and haunt some comments sections. It'll be fun.
If you are still in need of page views for your launchrock, Evan offers a few alternative strategies to help you get to your 100.
Congratulations on your 100+ page views! Now it's time to parse all that data, and decide whether or not your pitch experiment was a success.
If you're ready to move forward from your pitch experiment, we're about to ramp it up, asking for higher levels of validation with a fancier site.
In this lesson, we give you more tools to spice up your complex landing page.
We start building a landing page that's harder, better, faster, and stronger, with Instapage.
Welcome to Instapage! In this video, Evan covers how to set up multiple version of your site so that you can find the most successful version of it.
Step-by-step guide to pimping out your landing page with optional, but seriously battle-tested additional info.
Now that you've created at least one instapage...page, it's time to start thinking about AB testing.
Now that your variations are set, we add some last minute touches to our instapage(s) to make sure we grab subjective data as well.
Make your own pitch experiment with AB testing!
Our first stop on the carousel of ads is Facebook. Get ready to make the news-feed.
We get into the first step of setting up Facebook Ads, targeting your audience and adding your copy.
In this video, we set our budget and adjust our clicks and finally are ready to take our Facebook ads to market.
In this series of videos, Evan covers how to set up an Adwords campaign that'll do the next best thing to winning a land war in Asia: having your product show up on Google.
The next step in setting up your Adwords campaign is to find the right keywords to bid on. Both Google and Evan have suggestions for you.
Evan provide a few metrics that will help you decide to keep moving up the stair ladder, or to adjust your campaign. Warning: this lecture may be provocative.
Yer A Wizard, Harry! Specifically, you're about to build a Wizard Of Oz MVP to test your product in the wild. Evan lays out all the tools you're going to need to do that, including legos.
Before you can build you need a foundation. Evan covers the different content management systems out there, and which one might be right for your MVP.
Once you have a CMS system set up, you may need to add integrations to perfect your MVP on the front end. In this lesson, Evan goes through how to find the ones you need and properly integrate them.
(Almost) lastly, we go through how to link up all your integrations so that your MVP is able to do everything you need it to.
Your final challenge is to build your MVP.
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