Startup Resources: Minimum Viable Product

How to define a minimum viable product (MVP); how to build prototypes quickly and cheaply. See the "Idea, Design, MVP" chapter in Part I, Products for more info.

  1. Landing Pages
  2. A/B Testing
  3. Explainer Video
  4. Rapid prototyping tools
  5. Further Reading

These startup resources are based on the book Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams by Yevgeniy Brikman. These resources are a work in a progress. They are also open source, so you can add your contributions by submitting a pull request to the Hello, Startup GitHub Repository. To see how these resources fit into the bigger picture, check out the The Startup Checklist, which is a comprehensive collection of everything you need to do to launch a startup.

Landing Pages

Tools that help you quickly build a landing pages, drive traffic to it, capture email addresses, and A/B test different copy and designs.


Lander

http://landerapp.com/

Create, Publish and Optimize for Free


Unbounce

http://unbounce.com/

Build, publish & A/B test landing pages without I.T.




KickoffLabs

http://kickofflabs.com/

Smarter Landing Pages, Opt-in Forms, & Email Marketing


Instapage

https://www.instapage.com/

Build and A/B Test Landing Pages in Minutes with Instapage.


Strikingly

https://www.strikingly.com/

Gorgeous, mobile-friendly websites in minutes.


Launchrock

http://launchrock.co/

A site builder dedicated to early customer acquisition.


Yola

https://www.yola.com/

Create a professional, free website in minutes. Get leads, book appointments and sell online.



GitHub Pages

https://pages.github.com/

Websites for you and your projects. Hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.



Formspree

http://formspree.io/

Just send your form to our URL and we'll forward it to your email. No PHP, Javascript or sign up required — perfect for static sites!


A/B Testing

A/B testing and multi-variate testing allow you to test changes to your products against each other and see which ones perform better.

Optimizely

https://www.optimizely.com/

One optimization platform for websites and mobile apps


Visual Website Optimizer

https://vwo.com

Easily change the headline, button, image or any other element to create multiple variations of your website. VWO will equally divide your website traffic among all the variations and track which one works the best for you.


Convert

http://www.convert.com/

A/B testing software for experts & agencies




AdPushup

http://www.adpushup.com/

Increase ad revenue from your website with advanced automatic A/B testing.


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Modesty

https://github.com/causes/modesty

Modesty is a simple, scalable, open source split testing and event tracking framework.


How long will your experiment take?

http://www.experimentcalculator.com

A simple calculator that you can use to calculate how long you should run an A/B test to get statistically significant results.



Explainer Video

Tools that make it easy to put together a video that explains your product.

VideoScribe

http://www.videoscribe.co/

Make your own whiteboard videos, fast.


PowToon

http://www.powtoon.com/

Free business presentation software animated video maker and PowerPoint alternative


GoAnimate

http://goanimate.com/

Make Professional Animated Videos. Easy learning curve. Low budget. Simple do-it-yourself tools.


Animaker

http://www.animaker.com/

Make Animated Videos on Cloud for free


Raw Shorts

http://www.rawshorts.com/

Make an Awesome Explainer Video Today. It's Free.


Renderforest

https://www.renderforest.com/

Renderforest is free online video maker. Easily create slideshows with music, promotional, explainer or animated business videos, logo animations, kinetic typography and more.





Freesound

https://www.freesound.org/

Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds.


Musopen

https://musopen.org/

Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on increasing access to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.


Envato Market

http://audiojungle.net/

233,539 Royalty Free Audio Files From $1


VoiceBunny

http://voicebunny.com/

Get fast, professional voice overs you'll love


Voices

https://www.voices.com/

The #1 Marketplace for Voice Overs


Rapid prototyping tools

Axure

http://www.axure.com/

Create Prototypes of Websites & Apps Without Coding


Fluid

https://www.fluidui.com/

Fast and friendly mobile prototyping


HotGloo

http://www.hotgloo.com/

A better way to create wireframes and prototypes for web & mobile.


Justinmind

http://justinmind.com/

Interactive wireframes for web and mobile.


UXPin

http://www.uxpin.com/

UX Design & Wireframing Tools As Beautiful As Your Work


Localtunnel

http://localtunnel.me/

Localtunnel allows you to easily share a web service on your local development machine without messing with DNS and firewall settings. Localtunnel will assign you a unique publicly accessible url that will proxy all requests to your locally running webserver.