Feel The Need For Lean

You have something in common with Jon Snow, believe it or not...You Know Nothing about how your idea will perform in the real world. The point of an MVP is to test an idea's performance, but in order to do that accurately you need to go about your testing in a certain frame of mind. To be in the Lean Mindset is to be data-centric and market-agnostic. 

Data-Centric Thinking means not assuming anything. You go about your testing scientifically, even if the result you're guessing will occur - aka your hypothesis - seems obvious. You don't know until you test.

If you want a visual breakdown of what that looks like, you're in luck! 

It starts with ideas - our observations of what business idea or product might be viable - which we then build with ninja-speed into an MVP, or a product that we can test. We measure the MVP and based on the data we receive, we learn what worked and what didn't. The key thing is that we take that learning back into our idea - we can improve it or change it based on what we've learned, or throw it out entirely and start all over again. 

The process of creating an MVP is a scientific one - building hypotheses and criteria for success, working with different tiers of testing, and taking the new validated information and incorporating it into the original idea. Throw all your assumptions about the market away and be agnostic - let the validated learning you pick up guide your conclusions, not the other way around. 

Don't get too hyped about being a scientist, though. What separates Lean from the scientific method is that your goal is to work fast. Test fast and fail fast so that it doesn't take you eons to finally test something awesome.