Firefox https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/pages/case-study-5-dot-2-b...

Case Study 5.2: Byte-Sized Case

Studies About MVPs of Well-known
Companies When They Started +
Reflect on Tinder
(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690700)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690701)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690702)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690703)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690704)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690705)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690706)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690707)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690708)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690709)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690710)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690711)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/1058159)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690713)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690715)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/1058187)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/1058188)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/1058189)

1 of 4 31-Mar-24, 22:12
Firefox https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/pages/case-study-5-dot-2-b...

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690716)

(https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/modules/items/690718)

Learning Outcome Addressed

Understand what information is needed from potential consumers and the means to get the
same, and when you can go to market with a minimum viable product or MVP, given the
context of your NPD process

Imagine spending years building a product that no one wants. It is frequent when entrepreneurs
make this mistake. MVPs are working products with minimum features needed for the user to
accomplish the task using the product. The idea is to test new ideas without needing to put
resources into building a full-fledged product.

Starting from there, as people adapt and suggest, business owners iterate the product and keep
building on it. But the first version to test out the concept is often a minimum-viable product. Even
though it may not seem like it, some of the nicest and the sleekest products we use these days
were once an MVP. And, it is not only digital products but also companies and processes that
have their own versions of minimum-viable products.

For Virgin airlines, the MVP was one plane flying on the route of Gatwick and Newark using a
leased BOEING. Slowly and steadily, they started adding more places and routes building upon
the MVP.

Let us see a few mini case studies, like this one, about MVPs of some of these famous companies
we admire.

Groupon

Groupon (https://www.groupon.com/) , a website that provides coupons, deals and discount

codes started as an email newsletter through a WordPress website (which is a very basic tech
stack and could not have taken longer to build than a few hours) probably with less than $10 in
cost.

This is a very nice example of MVP as it does serve the final purpose for the end-consumer, which
is to receive coupons and deals. While there is less functionality to it, compared to what could
have been done through a website, it is still enough to prove the point that there exists an
audience who would use the product when it is built.

Similarly, ProductHunt (https://www.producthunt.com/) is a site where startups submit their

product for launch and audiences keen to assess new products go to upvote, comment and
interact with the maker of the product. There are many mere features of the product now, but it
started as an email newsletter where the founder would email daily launched products to the

2 of 4 31-Mar-24, 22:12
Firefox https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/pages/case-study-5-dot-2-b...

audience. Ryan Hoover, the founder, set it up in 20 minutes. After validating and getting good
traction through the MVP, he went ahead to build the product.

ProductHunt now gets more than 4M eyeballs every month.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/) , as an MVP, started with 3 basic features: create profiles,

search profiles and send them an email request. People picked it up as there was a need for a
platform that lets you connect with your professional network in the early 2000s. On the same
note, Reid Hoffman (Co-founder of LinkedIn) says: “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version
of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Dropbox

Sometimes, entrepreneurs go even leaner on the MVPs and do not build a working product but
just demo videos. An example of this is Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) . The founders of
Dropbox decided to not buy the hardware (needed to build infrastructure for cloud storage) first,
but they created an explainer video.

Around 70,000 people signed up only through the video, which made it clear enough for them that
if there is a need, there are people who would buy the product.

You can watch the video here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE)

This concept of validating the problem and the solution without having to create a product is called
smoke testing. Another way of doing this is through creating a landing page explaining the product
with an email signup box for notifying the interested people once you launch.

Unsplash

Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/) (a platform for sharing and accessing stock photos for free,
recently acquired by Getty Images) is a good segue from Dropbox. Unsplash started as a Tumblr
blog (using a $19 theme) and was built in a matter of hours. Unsplash currently has 3M photos
freely available to use through their site. But as an MVP, to start with they uploaded only 10
photos on their Dropbox folder.

These were some examples of famous startups that started as an MVP, validated the problem,
understood more about the solution, and got feedback from potential users. Most importantly, all
these validations to feedback and iteration steps were taken before spending abundant resources
towards the development of the product.

These days, it is easier than ever to build MVPs using NoCode tools like Bubble.io, Glide and
Webflow. NoCode tools allow you to build apps and web apps, without coding, swiftly with almost
no other resources. Hence, it is important to understand what should be included in the MVP and
have no scope creep.

3 of 4 31-Mar-24, 22:12
Firefox https://classroom.emeritus.org/courses/3296/pages/case-study-5-dot-2-b...

How would you build Tinder MVP?

If you were to build Tinder’s MVP, you would want to have the ability for users to create profiles
and see others’ profiles of their chosen gender. That is the bare minimum but still doesn’t serve
the need of being able to ‘connect’ with other people— which would also be a compulsory module
to be developed for the MVP.

For the MVP, if you think that the infamous “right swipe” movement (to show a user is interested in
another user) would consume a lot of resources, you can simply have ‘yes’ and ‘no’ buttons on
right and left side of the screen—which would ultimately serve the purpose without having to put
more resources.

In-app messaging may also be a technically time-consuming feature to add. Let us say before you
develop that, you want to test if people would use Tinder for what it is worth without in-app chat
with their ‘matches,’ and just to be able to meet other people online. An alternative to the in-app
chat for the MVP could be to show each other’s contact info when two people match: quicker to
build and serves the purpose of connecting people.

There are many other features that would not be included in the MVP: undo a right swipe, delete a
message, passport feature (you can match with profiles of people based anywhere in the world),
in-app video call, etc.

What are your thoughts? How would you build the MVP of Tinder?

4 of 4 31-Mar-24, 22:12