Continuing the discussion from Mozilla Builders Open Lab:
Today, discussion with Mozilla Builders Open Lab was on focus, as in narrowing a startup’s scope, MVP (Minimum Viable Product) etc.
It was a good reminder, and mission-creep and taking on too much for our capacity has been a major problem for us if not the primary one.
But even our main vision (without getting side-tracked) is nowhere near as narrow as many startups. Aiming to be a co-op platform from the beginning brings up real challenges over just making a crowdmatching tool.
At what point does narrowing harm the mission? I’m not sure. But I think we should keep looking for how to focus while still checking that it isn’t getting out-of-line with our core mission and values.
In a chat about another startup’s work, user-feedback came up. I realized we could use clarity on that ourselves. Some thoughts/questions I have:
- What do we already have that we feel good enough about so that someone who is themselves the target audience can give us meaningful feedback?
- Would it be helpful for us to focus on the MVP of getting the crowdmatching experience to the point where we can get useful end-user feedback?
Especially on the second point, I imagine just going through the process from homepage to pledging. We check that we’ve at least set up an experience that works close enough to our intentions. Then, we actively solicit individual user feedback on that. Perhaps consider everything else as secondary/support to that MVP.
Thoughts?