Before starting a new business, or adding a new product or service to your existing business, read [The Lean Startup by Eric Ries](). In the book, he talks about the concept of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which is essentially the simplest version of a product that allows you to begin testing and learning from your customers as quickly as possible. The goal is to get something into the market with the least amount of effort, then observe how customers respond, and iterate from there.
Now, a caveat: as your business grows, it becomes more important to put extra thought into new products or services. These additions can impact your brand, create liabilities, mess with forecasting, and there are often many stakeholders to align with. But when you’re small, this isn’t your problem. Your biggest advantage is that you can run a ton of small, low-stakes experiments—maybe hundreds of them—before a big company can even get one off the ground.
One of my favorite hacks for implementing the lean startup methodology is asking this question of myself and my team: How would we test this idea by the end of the week? And, when we were even smaller: How would we test this idea over the weekend? This question is designed to eliminate all the useless discussions—like arguing about the background color of the website, the font, or even the product name. Instead, it focuses everyone on the task of getting the product or service into the hands of customers as soon as possible.
I often hear pushback from entrepreneurs: Yeah, but that won’t scale. I get it. But that’s the point of an MVP. The whole idea is to see if there’s a positive response from the market. Does it sell? Do people want it? If it works, then and only then should you spend the time, effort, and money on figuring out how to scale it. Think about it logically: if 75% of the effort in launching a new product is figuring out how to build it to scale, wouldn’t it be a good idea to first see if anyone even wants the product before investing all that time?
In my last company, we allowed clients to send mass text messages from the software. One of my favorite examples of testing a non-scalable solution was when we wondered if clients would want to send messages from their phones instead of the web. This was before mobile web worked like it does now, so the only option was for clients to send a message from their phone, and we’d send that message to all the phone numbers in their database.
We asked ourselves: How would we test this idea over the weekend? With only a few engineers on our team, it wasn’t feasible to build anything, so we ran out to the store, bought a cheap phone, and advertised to clients that if they sent a message to (206) 123-4567, it would automatically be sent to their entire database. Customers thought we had engineered a solution to take inbound texts, integrate them into the software, and send them out automatically.
What they didn’t know is that we were sitting at our desks with this cheap cell phone. When it dinged with a new message, we’d quickly log into our system, figure out which account the message was from, log in as them, re-type the message from the phone into the software, and manually hit send. For the customer, it was magic. For us, it was a very manual, non-scalable way of testing the feature—but it was the fastest way to find out if customers wanted this functionality.
What we didn’t anticipate was how much customers would love it. By the time we invested in building a scalable solution, we were receiving hundreds of texts a day. That meant we had to log into the system, type out the messages, and hit send—hundreds of times a day. It wasn’t fun, but it taught us a valuable lesson: only after confirming that customers actually wanted the feature did we invest in scaling it.
Now, someone might say: Why didn’t you just build it to scale from the beginning? Sure, if we knew for certain that the feature would be a hit, we would have. But this was just one of hundreds of tests we were running, and it’s impossible to predict which ideas will take off. I’ve seen features I was sure would be a huge success turn into total flops. And because we tested all of these as MVPs, we were able to quickly launch hundreds of tests instead of wasting time and money on just a few.
That’s how we tested new features in an existing company. But what about launching a whole new company? The same principles apply. I know so many entrepreneurs who spend years working on a business plan but never actually test the market to see if anyone wants to buy their product or service. Crazy, right?
Let’s take a hypothetical example: I think I have an orgasm-inducing cookie recipe and want to start a cookie business. Sounds great, right? There are two ways I could go about it:
**Option 1:** Write a detailed business plan, draft a mission statement, outline the concept, finalize recipes, and create a marketing plan. Plan the store’s buildout, secure an SBA loan, hire a real estate agent, then a designer and architect to design the store concept. After all that, hire a marketing and PR firm to promote the grand opening, hire staff, and finally open your store two years later, only to wait and see if anyone actually likes your cookies.
**Option 2:** Take your cookies to the local farmers’ market this weekend, set up a small stand, and see if anyone wants to buy them.
Why is Option 2 better? Because if no one wants your cookies, think about all the time and money you’ve saved by skipping the endless steps in Option 1. On the flip side, if people love your cookies, you’ve validated your business in a fraction of the time.
But here’s the kicker: Even if you’re nodding your head in agreement right now and agreeing that Option 2 is the way to go, it will probably still take you six months to start selling your cookies at the farmers’ market. Why? Because you’ll spend three weeks deciding on a company name, two weeks trying to trademark it, two weeks working with a designer to create a logo, two weeks designing packaging, two weeks waiting for that packaging to be made, two more weeks doing pricing surveys with friends and family, and then you’ll spend three months waiting for a stand at the farmers’ market to open up.
Sure, six months is better than two years, and you haven’t spent nearly as much money as you would’ve in Option 1. But it still took you six months to find out if people even like your cookies.
So here’s my suggestion: Ask yourself How could I test this business over the weekend? Or better yet, How could I test this business today? There’s no substitute for action, and the faster you can learn, the better. You want to know by the end of the day if you have something.
How would it even be possible to launch a cookie business by the end of the day? That’s the beauty of the question—it forces you to cut out all the BS. If I had one day to start my cookie business, I’d go to the store in the morning, pick up all the ingredients for the cookies, stop by a craft store for some basic packaging, grab a marker and a poster board, and swing by Best Buy to grab a Square or PayPal card reader (because these days, no one carries cash, and I don’t want to lose a sale because someone didn’t have cash).
I’d rush home, bake the cookies, pack them into the bags, and write on the bags, “Derek’s F*#%ing Amazing Cookies”—don’t worry, I can change the name later if needed. Then I’d grab a foldable table and chair (or my dining room table, or even my kids’ arts and crafts table, or heck, the hood of my car if I have to), and head out to the busiest spot I could find. On the poster board, I’d write: “Best F%^&ing Cookies on Dorris Road (Full money-back guarantee if you don’t agree) $4.99/Bag”.
Boom. Now you’re in business.
And don’t get bogged down in health regulations, sales tax, or licensing. I’m not saying to ignore those things forever, but don’t let them stop you from testing your idea. If you’re not willing to risk the local cops showing up and telling you that you can’t sell cookies on your front lawn, maybe entrepreneurship isn’t for you. Running my previous company, I would’ve gladly welcomed my biggest problem being local law enforcement enforcing some minor regulation.
So, what happens if people love your cookies? Is it time to call the architect and start planning your store? Hell no. The goal of starting a business is to keep running small tests with the least amount of risk and effort so that if something doesn’t work, you can pivot or abandon the idea with minimal loss.
Here’s a final thought: Most successful entrepreneurs built their companies by constantly testing MVPs. But it’s interesting to see that when they launch their next venture, they often follow the approach from Option 1. Why? It’s all about reputation. You won’t see an ex-Fortune 500 CEO selling cookies on their front lawn using their kid’s arts and crafts table. Instead, they’ll spend $1 million on a designer to come up with the perfect shade of blue for their store’s logo. Now, you could argue that for someone worth $100 million, spending $1 million on testing a new business concept is like someone with $100,000 in their bank account spending $1,000—it seems reasonable. But here’s the thing: what’s more valuable than money? Time. Even for someone wealthy, they’re still spending way too much time on an idea before they know whether people actually want to buy their product or service.
Why do they do this? I think it comes down to overconfidence. They’ve had success once before, so they assume they know everything and no longer need to test the market. And I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of this too. After experiencing success, it’s easy to think that your gut instinct is all you need and that these “stupid little tests” are a waste of time. But trust me, no matter how successful you’ve been, you can’t skip testing and validating. The market will tell you what works—not your previous success.
And one last thing: don’t get discouraged if your first iteration doesn’t work out. You’ve got two options if your cookies don’t sell. One, maybe it’s not the right business for you, and you can walk away without wasting too much time or money. Or two, you can take what did work—like maybe the $4.99 price was a hit but people didn’t like the raisins—and iterate. The next day, sell cookies without raisins, keep the same price, and see if you get better results. Keep tweaking and testing until you either succeed or decide it’s time to move on.
That’s the beauty of the MVP mindset. It’s all about quick action, rapid learning, and not being afraid to test and fail—because the real failure is waiting months or years to find out if your idea is viable.
Keep testing, keep learning, and don’t get bogged down in the details that don’t matter until you know that people actually want what you’re offering.