
Show HN: Weekend Project - My MVB (minimum viable business)  - thehodge
http://thehodge.co.uk/blog/business/hodgetastic/my-weekend-project-a-mvb-minimum-viable-business.php
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derefr
I wouldn't really call this a "minimum viable" anything—as you said, you had
already purchased the necessary equipment to run your own events with; at that
point, you had invested 99% of the start-up cost for an events company, that
just happened to not exist yet. I would say this is more of an extension to
your current business (it's re-using its assets, after all) than a new
venture.

I mention this because it makes the advice you've given a bit less general
than you've made it out to be: the "step zero" of your MVB seems to be "have
some uncommon set of skills and knowledge, and own some expensive equipment,
that could have already been a full-time business operating at scale if you
had just gotten off your lazy butt earlier and marketed it as such." That's a
bit different than the nominal idea of an MVP, which is more "put up a page
offering X, and only bother to invest in the resources+knowledge required to
make X at scale if there's demand for it."

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prodigal_erik
An MVP actually offers crude but working versions of the features you're
evaluating. A page offering something that doesn't exist at all is not any
kind of product, merely false advertising that can only tell you what people
_think_ they might want _without_ having tried it. It also poisons your
reputation among people like me who care about an efficient market that isn't
filled with chaff.

~~~
derefr
You missed the words "at scale." An MVP is when you offer a service X, but
only build the capacity to handle, e.g., one customer, until you have 2+
customers. Sometimes this is done by not building anything at all, but rather
by manually creating what the service would create for the person. The idea is
that you only invest in automating/scaling/tooling up when you actually
determine that there is demand, rather than building something for no reason.
It's sort of like TDD: you have a facade (your storefront) that presents a
finished product, and have customers make requests through it—then your
business does the simplest thing that could possibly work to satisfy each
request, only adding code/equipment/people/etc. when a request can't possibly
be satisfied without it.

In the case of the article, an actual MVB (as done by someone who doesn't
already own event-staging equipment) would be to put up the page, and then
only rent the equipment needed if-and-when people actually set up an event.

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prodigal_erik
Thank you. I did assume "put up a page offering X" was advocating a dry test
and you needn't be prepared to offer some kind of X prototype.

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thehodge
Evening HN'ers, Thought I'd share my weekend project with you and see what you
think, I run a few events in the UK (Conferences, Barcamps, Hack Days) and I
decided to take my learnings and see if I could help other people who want to
run events (we have a reputation for doing things a bit differently).

I'm still learning rails so projects like these are as much about learning a
new language as they are looking at a potentially new business.

I hope this interests someone and if you have any questions, let me know

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rokhayakebe
I scanned the post, and I have no idea what service you offer.

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thehodge
Hmm I see what you mean, I guess I was trying to make the post more about
how/why I built it in a weekend rather than trying to sound like I was trying
to sell the company to the readers... I take your point though, thanks :)

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pknerd
Very Informative post. It would be much better if can share how would you
scale it in future and what's your business model.

Thanks and best of luck!

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thehodge
Scaling is easy for this, I have a team of people we use for events who have
agreed to come onboard and help with any contrats we get for this.

Our business model is to charge people for organising, hiring or providing
items or advice

