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DEFINE the Problem or Opportunity

MVS - Minimum Viable Segment

Beware: Don't Overlook Your MVS

Demandware case study & video

MVS compared to a beachhead

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DEFINE for whom?

Many entrepreneurs become too focused on the “product” part of product-market fit. They become consumed with their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and forget about the “market” part. So while the MVP is critical, it’s missing its partner in crime: the

Minimum Viable Segment (MVS)⁠

What is a Minimum Viable Segment?

Minimum Viable Segment is about focusing on a market segment of potential customers with the same needs to which you can align. The MVS framework focuses on identifying the smallest, most homogenous segment of customers with the same problems. Defining and focusing on your MVS is vital because, without it, potential users who have divergent needs will quickly pull your MVP in many different directions.

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This, in turn, will bloat—not minimize—your product requirements and drain your limited startup resources. In lean startup terms, by definition it will cause your Minimum Viable Product to become a Maximum Bloated Product! And you won’t just feel that drag in product development. It’ll come back to haunt you in any go-to-market (GTM) activities and then again in customer service and support, potentially paralyzing your business model.

By contrast if you define and apply a Minimum Viable Segment (MVS), your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will indeed stay minimal and enable you to maximize the use of your scarce startup resources. Simply put MVS+MVP = Maximum startup effectiveness!

Find the Same, Similar, or Very Closely Related Needs

Focus on finding a set of customers who have the same or as similar a need, pain, or problem as possible to those of the other customers in your MVS.

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To be explicit about this, it is the same needs you are looking to fulfill—not features you want to build. What’s the difference? For starters, customers don’t think in terms of features. They think in terms of pain and need. If you keep building features they don’t need you’re just wasting your resources. And if you keep building more features for more different divergent needs, you’ll keep expanding your footprint to meet different customer’s needs and never get the repeatability and leverage you could enjoy from serving a single need repeatedly in an MVS.

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While a new feature might address a initial need for a new customer, if they’re on a different path from other customers, you’ll find your product roadmap quickly diverging and straining your resources everywhere from development to sales and marketing to support.

Accelerate Product Market Fit (PMF)

By contrast you can both accelerate PMF and maintain it, by breaking it down into Minimum Viable Segments and build broader and broader Product Market Fit one MVS at a time.

So figure out your MVS and stay focused until you prove success with customers recommending you to other customers in that segment, then look for repeatability and scalability that allows you leverage in your business model to ultimate enable you to invest in other segments as needed for growth and market leadership. Hell

The importance of MVS cannot be understated, so to understand it fully, read on here

Beware: Don't Overlook Your MVS⁠

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Startup Secret: Product Market Fit is way easier to achieve if you start by pursuing Product Segment Fit, where your segment is an MVS in which every customer has the same need!

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Do you want to start building a pipeline of qualified prospective customers?

Hopefully the answer is yes! What if you could do it before you even build your product and at no cost other than your time? All that and more is possible if you’re willing to get really curious about who these people are. Let’s go!

Steps to finding your target MVS prospective customers:

What if you could get inside your potential customers minds and read exactly what they need?

Don’t just identify them, identify with them

A core Startup Secrets principle is to get into the mindset of your customer. Learn to live and work as they do and think like they do. The more you do this, the easier it will be for you to identify with their pain, needs, wants and desires, and see any opportunity through their eyes. This is obviously important in B2C, but for different reasons just as important in B2B, where you’ll need to learn to identify with their role in their work and their organization, as well as how they influence the buying decision. Your customer might be the user, but they may not be the buyer, or have the authority to authorize the purchase. (More on this in

Go to Market⁠

where we’ll discuss DMUs, Decision Making Units.)

What if you could identify all the same kinds of customers so once you’re read one mind you could know them all?

Target Customer Profile

The more specific you can be about your prospective customer, the better you will be able to relate to them and the more able you’ll be to predict and then validate how your value proposition will resonate with them.

Here are some example questions to help you define your target customer:

Demographics:

Are they individuals, small businesses, enterprises, etc.?

Who are they in terms of age, gender, location, or income level?

Behavior:

What are their daily habits, routines or work patterns?

Are they tech-savvy, budget-conscious, health-conscious, climate aware, etc.?

Psychographics:

What are their interests, motivations, or values?

What drives them to make decisions or purchases?

To over simplify this, you’re looking to find clusters of similar people that you can target because they have a similar profile.

Simple Example

Demographics: "Busy working parents aged 30-45 living in urban areas, with a household income of $60,000 or more."

Behavior: "They are frequently on the go, value convenience, and often rely on technology to simplify their lives."

Psychographics: "They value health and wellness but often sacrifice it for convenience."

Challenges: "They struggle to find time to manage their finances due to their busy schedules."

This is a simple starting point for then investigating further what needs they may have that might be unmet.

Relating this to MVS

The target user profile is really a more granular view of the people within your MVS.

Once you’ve got a profile of who they are, it’s time to then hone in on what needs they have and begin grouping them into an MVS of people with the same or similar needs. Get out and ask them:

What challenges do they face in their life?

What specific problems do they wrestle with ? (That your product will eventually solve)

if possible get them to prioritize them, seeking the most painful ones that are Unavoidable, Urgent, Unworkable, and Underserved. See the

4U⁠

framework⁠

How do these problems affect their daily life or work?

What are the consequences of not solving them? (Time, money, stagnation etc)

The more severe the consequences, the greater the likelihood of them taking action.

Startup Secret: Use your

MVS⁠

to choose who to do market research and prospective customer validation with. Qualify who you survey, interview or do focus groups with, to see if they appear to have the same needs and fit your MVS. Then dig deeper with them to get relevant market feedback that will help you focus.

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