Growing Your App: From MVP to MLP

Matt: [00:00:00] All righty, everybody, this is another edition of the Web News, and we have of an interesting one, very, uh, sort of active and relevant to, to us right now. So we've talked over the years about MVP, which is a minimum viable product. Which is sort of like, let's just use mobile app as an example. Your, your most, or your minimum viable mobile app.

So if you're gonna be making a golf app, you know, can the thing record scores? And if it can, then that's the minimum viable product, as an example. But there's another version of MVP, which is sort of a, a level up, if you will, which is the MLP, which is the minimal lovable product. And you have a question there where, are the people downloading your app gonna fall in love with your product? And oftentimes, the MVP and the MLP are far apart, or at the very least, there's a space between them, where the, the one or two features that you m- [00:01:00] make to make your product viable is not quite enough to have people fall in love, wanna download, talk, share, review even your app. So I'll, I'll just kinda zoom in on mobile apps, like I'll just use that, but this can be applied to web apps and websites and, and, and other things, uh, to an extent as well, video games even to some extent. So I'll lay this out and why this is relevant to us. So we've been talking about making a golf app for a while, and it kind of fell apart. Like we, we live streamed it and stuff, and we like found, had, had about a bunch of problems with our, our golf app idea, and it kind of fell apart, fell by the wayside.

You know, we're working on other projects and things, so we didn't give it a second thought. But I'm a very avid golfer. I went out there, and I am sick and tired of having golf apps that have a pre- a pre-installed amount of courses. when I go to a, a, a place that is not in one of these apps, it's like, great.

So, like, what I'm trying to do, just for fun [00:02:00] and just for, I guess, personal growth, is I'm trying to record my scores. I'm trying to see if I'm doing generally better. I wanna be able to compare, you know, in the past and say, "Oh, like last time I was at this course, I shot this. This time I shot this," you know, what does that mean kind of thing. And I wanna see a history. How many times did I play this, this year? How many times did I play, you know, last year? Things like that. And I don't need the fancy GPS. I don't need the fancy any of that stuff. I, I use a, a, a rangefinder that's like an analog. Like I literally just pick it up and, you know, it's like a laser finder, whatever, rangefinder that I use, little handheld unit And so I thought it would be great to create a golf app where you can enter the course in right there. It's not meant to be this, you know, PGA grade or USGA grade, this is my handicap for sure, and this is, you know, super serious, and blah, blah, [00:03:00] blah. I have a lot of friends that just record their score in a notes, in Apple Notes, or they just simply take a picture of the scorecard, and they roughly track their stats. And for me, I'm in the same boat where sometimes I go to a course that's just sort of like a random nine-hole or a random 18 that's sort of family-run, you know, kind of in, literally usually in a former farmer's field. And it's a cool little place, and I just wanna record my score, and that's all I want. I thought this would be a great thing to create an app for. But then I also figured, you know what? Because this is a for-fun app, I figured that we could add some kinda, not co-op, but multiplayer things here. So we could do, hey, spin up a quick scramble and just record who's pl- like who won. Spin up a quick best ball and record who's doing what. Spin up maybe even a little mini tournament just between you and your friends, and you can just say like, "Oh, group one is, you [00:04:00] know, Matt and Mike. Group two is, you know, stranger one, stranger two." And we have a little tournament, and we can have a little end date. Maybe it's end of the season and Canada gets cold, so, you know, golf season ends, and we can say that and just say, "Okay, you know, once December hits, that's it, and we'll see who won how many rounds."

Do, is it stroke play? Is it match play? Just stuff like that, and just, just for fun. No u- no, no, no fancy stuff. And so Mike, you and I have had that discussion over what the MVP versus the MLP of something like that is. And W- where this, I guess, conversation kinda comes from, and I'll, I'll pass it to you after this, Mike, is I've talked to some people where they're, they think that you need all the fancy stuff.

You need the, the mobile app, and you also need the, the watch app for the smartwatch that ties into it. You need the ranges, 'cause if you're not a golfer, you can Let's say you're playing at a course that is in one of these apps, you can kinda say, [00:05:00] "Hey, I'm playing hole one," and it'll GPS where you are and say, "Oh, you're 100, 100 yards from the hole, 200 yards from the hole.

You know, you're here, you're there." you can use that as a rangefinder. You can track your shots live and things like that. And a lot of people who just wanna casually golf don't use that, or they, and they don't wanna be on their phone. I know a lot of people that are just like, "No, my phone is in do not disturb mode," myself included when I'm out there.

And I don't want my freaking phone buzzing and, you know, texting everybody and every freaking email that comes in. so is, like, just a scorecard is something that's, like, a simple idea like this, which is simple by design intentionally, almost as a sale, a selling point of, hey, this is supposed to be a simple app.

We don't want all those frills. something like that lovable?

Mikhail: I, this is a really subjective discussion, right? It's, it's very much like this isn't a [00:06:00] science, lovable versus viable. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. Um, a lot of times people say, like, vi- viable means that it's really, like, you're testing one f- major feature of the application. Lovable could be a combination of that.

But really, like the, you know, if we're-- we-- you could equate the two, right? Like some people probably equate v- viable to lovable. So putting that conversation aside, what you really wanna do is make a product that people will use, period. That's it. That's your goal. And if every conver- Like, let's say your goal is to get people to use this application.

If you go to people and be like, "I'm making this scorecard application," uh, the people around you, the people that you're making it for, and it's gonna be a super simple scorecard application, and every single one of them says, "Yeah, that's cool, but I need this. Every-- That's cool, but I need this. That's cool, but I need this," that's a good indicator for you that that's not enough, right?

Like if every- it, uh-- On the other side of it is everyone's like, "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for," or like, "I'll, I'll definitely try that out," like, [00:07:00] and they don't suggest 15 other features, then you're probably on the right track. But you have to figure out a way to gauge that interest in whatever you're gonna be making, and that, the best way to do that is to talk to the people that you think are gonna be using it before you actually invest a bunch of time into making it, right?

You can assume whatever you want, and there could be different goals. One goal could be, "Hey, I'm making an app for myself." In that case, then the minimal lovable product is whatever it, it is for you, and that's okay, right? Like, that's an okay assumption, and that's an okay thing to... like an okay goal, but that's the goal that you have to set your mind at.

If your goal is to get more people to use it, then you have to talk to the people, and you have to figure out what combination of features or what feature, like it could be one feature or it could be a combination, will lead to people actually using it. And the other complication now in today's age is that we're actually overestimating the features because of AI.

I'm seeing products come out [00:08:00] with like 30 features on day one and a super complicated dashboard and 15 different workflows and 15 different like, you know, onboarding tutorials because the, like the, the, what is it? The Stopper, the building stopper, the, the thing that makes it hard to build has gone down.

And so now we can pack in 15 features in the same amount of time that would've taken us to do two or three. And so our mind goes, "Well, why don't we just do all these features and see what people use?" But the reality of that is that you're actually overcomplicating a product, you're probably making it clunkier, and you're lowering the usability of it when you should just be using that time that you've now saved to either market, to talk to people, or to make the app better for those whatever two, one to three to four features, whatever it, whatever the combination of features is required to get to a minimal lovable product, and it's tough.

I'm seeing this struggle all the time. I see it, like, with my- [00:09:00] the, the apps that I'm working on right now. Like, we, we released too many features. We did, absolutely. We-- I've-- we released in fact, an app, and I know for a fact, like, we've had, you know, now probably, like, 100 people use it, and most people use, like, one feature, maybe two out of the 30 to 50 that we released.

So that, that and to me tells us that we went down the wrong rabbit holes way too early, and they all seem like good features. Like, this is the thing, like, all those seem like good features, and we got feedback f- we usually, we usually acted on the features because of feedback, right? But even for the people that provided the feedback sometimes it was just one-off suggestions, and those people aren't using the features.

So unless you have consensus, and unless you have, like, a good idea of, like, this is, these combination of features are actually gonna work, you don't know, and releasing all the features at once is also not the strategy. So it's a tough one.

Matt: The thing, the thing too is, so when you [00:10:00] were talking about the initial conversations you're having with people, what do you think about justifying it to them? So what I mean by that in that initial conversation is, let's just say you, you don't- you're unaware of this, this golf app idea, and I approach you, come to you and I say, "I have this golf app idea," or, "I have this golf app here.

It's in beta. Do you wanna try it out?" and you, and you're saying, they're not gonna ask for this quest- or this feature, this feature, this feature, this feature." But some people will come to you with that c- in that conversation, that initial conversation differently and they'll say, made a casual golf app."

And you almost have to justify out of the gate, and this is almost what I would do reflex, like if I had this app, this beta ready. would say, "This is intentionally a casual app not, you know, not PGA worthy. It's for casual players. It's for casual this and that," and I would justify that. when I say that out loud, [00:11:00] that justify phrase, it's like, is this app ever gonna be lovable because I'm already justifying it out of the gate? Do you think that, that, that if a, if an app needs justification like that, it's a problem? I, I don't know.

Mikhail: I, I wouldn't say inherently. I don't, I don't think inherently, as long as you justify it correctly and you get the response back that you would assume would be a positive response. So if you're talking to a friend, a lot of times they will try to go a different direction. Like, a lot of times I say like, "Hey, I made this app."

And then they're like immediately, "Oh, what about this app?" And that, that in, in itself isn't an indicator about, like, that is a bad idea. That's an indicator about you having to try to, like, get them back to the app and then, like, talk through it with them and be like, "Hey, this is what I'm thinking, this, this, th- this."

And then the gauge is their response. So sometimes their response will be really muted and be like, "Oh, okay. That's cool." That to me is like, okay, they're not really interested in this. I'll talk to someone else. [00:12:00] I'll talk to this person, this person. That's fine. Uh, but if everyone comes back to me in that way, then I know I'm go- on the wrong, on the wrong path.

But if, if all of a sudden I'm starting to, like, be able to veer people back and then they're like, "Oh, I get that. Okay, what about this?" Especially when they're starting to throw out, like, the connections between your features and, like, how you're starting to think through it, right? Like how your own mind, your, your own, um, mindset back at you.

That's when you know you're onto something, when they're, when they start connecting the dots, right? Uh, uh, themselves after you've given them a little bit, right? And they're like, "Oh, but what about this?" And you're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm building that, I'm building this." And like that, as soon as you have that kind of back and forth, you, you start to understand like, okay, there might be something here, especially if you have it with multiple of your friends and then like, then you can start to go in and build those features out and get people to use it, in my opinion.

So you really have to gauge the reactions and understand that friends are going to be more muted, and a lot of times they're not gonna give you, like, direct critical feedback. They're just gonna be less interested, and that, you have to treat that as the, the critical feedback of like, okay, they're not [00:13:00] interested, right?

Like, yeah, they're, they didn't, they didn't ask me follow-up questions. They didn't have their own ideas for it. They didn't, they weren't interested in this thing, this thing. So it's n- it's really a difficult Concept to figure out, like be- being a product person, product-minded, and figuring out what to actually build, I feel like is probably one of the hardest jobs and has to be kind of taken as a lottery as well.

Even if you're the best product person, you're still gonna miss a bunch of times. Now, you can have, like, the best processes in place, and you're obviously gonna... That's obviously gonna increase your, uh, success rate for sure. Like, as you get better and that, as you, as you fail more, you'll understand what not to do and stuff like that.

But even, even at the end of the day, like, you're still kinda shooting in the dark and relying on intuition. And so getting as much of that intuition as you can to be something, like, coherent and actionable, um, is the play here. Like, that's, that's [00:14:00] what you have to find and y- and finding the minimal lovable product is part of that concept, is like how do you get people to actually...

'Cause right now app fatigue is still a very real thing. People are not just gonna use apps, right? Like, if you really want to be successful, it has to be something that, like, actually solves their problem immediately, whatever problem you're trying to solve for. Yeah.

Matt: for it 'cause they need

Mikhail: They have to. Exactly. Like, I'm-- I know, like, you can create...

I, I, I talked about this on a, on a, on an episode that's coming up actually. Like, I created this game, and I, in my opinion, it's a cool game. Like, it's a fine, like, it's a fun game. People have said it's fun, but I don't think it's gonna be something that, like, people reach for to, to play all the time. So it's just, like, a step for me.

It's, like, you know, something that I'm working on. I'm not treating it as something that's going to be b- you know, it's not gonna break through, 'cause I know that, like, it's very mid, mid-range. I'm happy with it, but it's very mid-ranged, [00:15:00] right? So and I'm okay with that. That's my expectation of it. Whereas if I f- make a game that, like, I feel like could addict people, it could be addictive, that's a different conversation.

That's a different concept f- in my brain, like how I go about that, how I play on people's, you know, habits and stuff like that. So you have to think through what you're creating, how it's going to be part of someone's life, whether it's entertainment or productivity, whatever, or u- utility, and go through the aspect of, like, when would they reach for this?

Like, when would they actually take this over X, Y, and Z, right? Like, if it's a game, when would they reach for my game versus picking up their, you know, the mobile game that they've already been playing for 10 years and stuff like that. Like, there's, you know, there, there's a lot that goes into that thought process, and depending on how serious you are, you have to go down those rabbit holes pretty deeply to come up with something that's viable and lovable.

Matt: I, I think there's something that we should distinguish here too is that we're not [00:16:00] saying that an MVP has to be an MLP right away

Mikhail: Yep

Matt: Like, an MVP gets, gets you out, out the gate, like even with your elevator game, whether you continue it or not, it's almost like your MVP for creating something. You really wanted to create something, you thought of a game, and you made it.

That's almost like an MVP just for you. But even in this golf app, you know, like more practically speaking, I might release it without the scrambles and the tournaments and things like that, and then eventually we'll add that, and then eventually down the road maybe we'll add accounts or something like that. It... Like, an MVP is still important as a proof of concept, 'cause some people are gonna think your MVP is an MLP for them, on your idea. Some people might be, might think, "Man, this is so simple. This is awesome." other people are gonna say, like you said, "Where's, you know, where's this feature?

Where's that feature?" And I did like how you, you highlighted the friends thing because especially if you're an indie developer, your friends might not be the target market, but they're the [00:17:00] only people that you have to test your app unless you have some sort of online community, and you might be giving them, you know, a productivity app or something where person that's testing it for you like a professional like videographer, and they don't really do word processing.

They don't really do the productivity thing. They just, they do their videos, and that's what they do, right? They're more of a creative person and less of like a, you know, hardcore organized let's get productivity in kind of thing. A- and then th- and so like that's the wrong person, and it's, it's hard to...

It, it... Th-this is a difficult process, like choosing who to, who, who to test it, who is available to test it, like I mentioned with the friend group, then also managing their feedback. I mean, we have, we have a couple friends who the instant that something is slightly wrong with an app, they're like, "This is the worst thing I've ever

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: is the stupidest thing," and that's literally their feedback. "I don't know why you would ever use this." And it's like, well, you can't take... That's not the masses. Like they... N- [00:18:00] person is, uh, extremely picky or extremely one, one way. They, they take forever to find their calendar app, for example, and once they have their calendar app, they're one update away from taking that calendar app out of their life because they're like a firecracker and they wanna get rid of it.

I mean, you can't rely on the feedback. It... So it's, it's difficult to get feedback. It's difficult to sift through the feedback. And then y- you're saying it's very difficult as a product person to decide what to do How do we make this thing lovable? Is the MVP even enough? That's a, that's a classic question that we've received a bunch. Is the MVP enough? Because I mean, technically speaking, some MVPs, yeah, it's viable-ish, but to get to MLP, let's say, is

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and which is crazy, but just for the sake of conversation is 100 features, and your ML- your MVP is one feature. Well, like, is that really your MVP? Like, you know, you do need to look at [00:19:00] the comparison between MVP and MLP because the people who adopt you early oftentimes may be investing in you to an extent and may wanna see that journey, or they wanna see the, the path to the MLP where they're like, "Oh, this is..." Like an early access video game is a prime example where they can see your vision and they can say, "Yeah, this is gonna be sick in two years. I'll support this." Whereas they don't wanna be like, "Oh, like this is fun today, but like this is it?" They don't-- You don't wanna give somebody that impression

Mikhail: Well, yeah, I, that's exactly it. And, like, one final thing I wanna say, and this is gonna seem, like, a little bit tangential, but I think it's important to understand, especially wh-when you're building a product and you're trying to find your MLP. One is you kinda have to trust your gut a lot on this. So if you build something and you love it, let's say that that's the case, and you're getting some bad feedback here and there, but you love it.

Like, you, you really do believe in it. Like, [00:20:00] that's your, your gut is not, you know, saying that it's bad and stuff like that. You're just-- You actually love it. I think you do have to pursue it a little bit harder. I, I think you have to be a little bit resilient in this situation. And I'll give a good example here, like this is not app related, but I was at a concert yesterday, uh, Alex Warren concert.

So he's just like a pop singer. Um, uh, my wife likes him, but, you know, I was, I was there. He's pretty good.

Matt: My

Mikhail: he has a s-

Matt: obsessed with him, so yeah, I, I'm aware of who that is

Mikhail: You're aware of who he is? Okay, so good. So he has a song called Ordinary. Uh, good song. Like, you know, it's one of his most popular hits. He told a story on stage where, like, he wrote Ordinary and he knew it was gonna be good.

Like, he knew it was good. He sent it out there on TikTok, got zero views. Sent it out again, got zero views. Sent it out again, got zero views. Month goes by, his publisher's like, "Ah, I don't know if it's gonna work." And he's like, "Dude, I know this is gonna be good." And so he kept going from different angles and eventually found, like, this thing called BookTok, which I don't know what that is, but regardless, [00:21:00] like

Matt: I know what book talk is too, yeah

Mikhail: Sure.

So he found BookTok and he explained this whole thing, like, and then it, it, it blew up. And, like, his gut was telling him that it was good, and he listened to it, and he went down the rabbit hole. And I do think that success comes from there, because a lot of times your gut will tell you that it's bad, and you do have to trust that as well.

That's the other part of this, like, the other side of the coin. So I really do think resiliency plays a big role in something like a product, like when you're, when you're creating a product. If you can't trust your own gut, you're already-- you have other problems. So trust it. Trust yourself and be a little bit more resilient, 'cause the, the first five people that you talk to about a product that you really like might hate it, but the next, you know, the sixth person, the seventh person, the eighth person, who knows, could start to like it, and all of a sudden they could tell their friend and it could, it could blow up.

And if you don't try that path, and if you don't, you know, [00:22:00] grind it out a little bit and, you know, give it your all about something that you built, who else is gonna do it for you? No one. I don't... It, it-- Again, it's not, like, directly related to this, but I do think it's important, an important part of when building an MVP, an MLP, a product in general, is, like, that part, the resiliency part is not teachable.

It's not something that's inherently... Not everyone is going to do it, and that's why it's a successful option, because a lot of people will bounce out after that first, like, you know, two, three, four no's

Matt: And I think this is actually really important, especially in the era of algorithms and social media as well. Like, I mean, you were mentioning BookTok, like that's a

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: a community on TikTok.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm

Matt: what, what really What really makes something go big is it being good, of course, but generally speaking, of course, there's always exceptions, but it being good, but also the algorithm picking it up. Like one, one person, like one [00:23:00] celebrity or one even just influencer, even low, like low follower influencer should reshare something at the right time and the algorithm picks it up and they get a whole bunch of likes and

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: all this stuff, that, that video, let's say, that was posted four times, 200 views, 200 views, 200 views, gets picked up, two million. you know that it's good because it's not only views, it's like now it's two million with like likes and like 4,000 comments and all these other things. So you know, like it justifies that. And, and you're not always gonna be right in what you think is right or, or what you think is good. Or you think it's good, and it maybe it really is, but it's good for too niche of an audience or

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: like that.

You're not always gonna have it right. But the resilience is totally a really good thing to bring up, like, because like that's 100%. Even with your MVP, if you're working on the MVP, I mean, like how many people out there have done the whole build in public thing and [00:24:00] their first 10 videos of them their thing didn't do too well, but then the 11th, the 12th, the 15th, and then skip, now it's at 20. You know, the, now you're starting to hit, get like really important viewers. I mean, like we've had, we've seen it with this podcast where we're like, "Man, this episode only got fifty-five downloads," but we got two people that talk to us a bunch of... like talk to us a bunch and like give us feedback and maybe we even talk to them on Discord here or there and things like that.

It's like, oh, okay, so like even though it was a, a little, only a little bit of downloads, this is way back when we first got started, even though it was just a little bit of downloads, there was two extremely valuable gets in that. And so it was actually like a really valuable, uh, like, like set of downloads, even though it didn't, you know, move the needle in terms of like, oh, we now have 1,000 per down- like 1,000 downloads an episode or whatever it is.

Like, oh my God, you know, we're doing so well. Even, even though we didn't get, you know, move that needle, you, you can still get some value out of that

Mikhail: Yeah. [00:25:00] I-- Yeah, and again, this is easier said than done. Uh, that meme, yeah, that meme or, like, that little image of the guy mining down the mine and giving up at the last second before he hit diamonds, that's a really good example of this, where, like, you know, you don't wanna be that guy, but you also don't wanna be the guy that's going down and, like, you're 10 levels deep and there's no diamonds.

Matt: There's no

Mikhail: So, like, fi-finding that balance, it's tough, and that's why it's a gut thing. Like, it, it is an intuition thing. At some point, your gut's gonna start going the other way and be like, "Okay, well, you know, I've given this my all, and I have been resilient, and it's not working, and so, like, maybe I'll try this one more thing, and then I'll try something else, and I'll be resilient about that."

Right? Like, finding that, like, ability to give up and a-admit failure is also important, but you need that balance. Like, you need to find... You need to be able to trust in what you're doing, and, and that's why, like, I really do recommend creating something good. Like, that's why the minimal lovable product is an important [00:26:00] aspect of this, 'cause if you love it, there's a chance that someone else might well, and you gotta, you gotta put yourself out there to get that response, and you gotta build something and trust it and go all in.

Matt: Uh, yeah,

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: this is a, like, I mean, this is a, this is a multifaceted thing. Like, not only is it technical, like what features do I do? Do they work well? Is it highly performant or whatever? But it's also marketing, it's also your gut. It's a, it's a difficult, uh, balance to strike. And, uh, I think, you know, to conclude this episode, I'd like to ask the listener out there, you know, if, if you're trying to, trying to make an app or trying to make a product, a website, whatever it is, like, what's your go-to for processes like this?

Uh, you know, have you had, have you had some success? Are you still struggling? Uh, are you struggling to get off the ground 'cause you're not, you know, you're not sure whether this app is good, or you're not sure if it's gonna be a good idea and things like that? Please let us know in the comments, you know, on the YouTube, on the Spotify, anywhere else, on social media as well.

Please, please let us know. It... I'd, I'd love to hear your stories on, you know, products that you wanna make, or just app [00:27:00] ideas that you've had, if you've started, if you haven't, if you've, if you've failed as well. If you've started an app and you thought it was the greatest idea ever and it fell apart, why is that?

You know, why, you know, why did it fall apart? But I think that's it. That's the web news. MVP versus MLP. I'll come up with a better title than that, but that's kinda generally the idea around this episode. Let us know your thoughts. we are signing off

Mikhail: Bye

Matt: Goodbye