Carly Buxton, PhD

As entrepreneurs, we often hear about the importance of creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test our ideas quickly and cost-effectively. We need to find a way to assess: are there people willing to pay for the service or product you’re hoping to sell? If so, you have a business; if not, you have a hobby. Today, I’m sharing how I stood up an MVP for my latest business idea, “Cocoon,” using just a handful of free tools. I’m ready to find out if Cocoon has potential as a revenue-generating business. Here’s my process.

The Importance of a Lean MVP

Before diving into the tools, it’s crucial to understand the philosophy behind creating a lean MVP. In my recent blog post, “What I Wish I’d Known About Creating an MVP as a Tech Startup Founder,” I discussed some key lessons:

1. Distill your product’s #1 “job to be done”

2. Build the hackiest, lowest fidelity way of completing that task

3. Try to sell that thing immediately

As I wrote in that essay, “The truth is: if you’re trying to build a startup beyond any kind of ‘lifestyle business’ scale, ie., something that you want people to back with capital, it WILL need to be the sort of thing that people pay you for, even if it’s janky and hacky and awful.”

With these principles in mind, I set out to create an MVP for Cocoon using free tools and following the guidance from Noah Kagan’s “Million Dollar Weekend” book (and all of the great resources he shares on his site).

The Free Tools I Used

Here’s a breakdown of the four free resources I utilized to bring my MVP to life:

1. Carrd.co: This fantastic platform allows you to create 100% free landing pages without the need to upgrade. It’s perfect for quickly putting together a professional-looking web presence for your MVP. It helps to know a little bit of basic coding just to know how to “talk” to the interface as you build the site, but I was able to stand up a nice-looking site with only minimal coding knowledge. The result: an attractive landing page that clearly communicates Cocoon’s value proposition.

2. Claude.ai: I leveraged my preferred AI assistant to help me craft web copy. I’ve found Claude to be a “better writer” than ChatGPT. I essentially just dumped a bunch of thinking about value propositions, product ideas, and ideal customer profile into Claude and asked for homepage copy and product descriptions. Of course it took some tweaking, but even the initial responses were helpful as I sorted out my thoughts.

3. HubSpot Form: To collect email addresses from potential customers, I used HubSpot’s free input form landing page tool. This has allowed me to start building a list of interested parties right from the get-go. Every HubSpot account gets one free form, and it’s possible to build it as its own url rather than embedded code, so it gives me a link to put in the buttons on my Carrd splash page without having to upgrade on Carrd to collect info there. HubSpot pings me when I get new interest, and I added payment details on my form’s thank-you page, but if I start to find that insufficient, the free HubSpot form also comes with one free email automation, which could be great for following up with leads.

4. PayPal: I suppose this doesn’t count as totally “free,” because Paypal takes a processing fee, but at least there’s no initial outlay of cash here for my $0 business idea. For collecting deposits and payments, I established a PayPal page and provided the link to it on my signup form’s “thank-you” page. If the would-be customer is interested in purchasing a Cocoon kit, they know how to send money via this trusted payment collection platform.

Key Takeaways

Creating this MVP reinforced several important lessons:

1. Start simple: You don’t need a fully-fledged product to test your idea. The Cocoon Kit does not even exist, and I’m only going to start whittling those wooden device cases and sourcing 30-minute sand hourglasses once (and if) I reach a threshold of pre-orders. A landing page and a way to collect payments IS enough to gauge interest.

2. Use free tools: There are plenty of free resources available that can help you create a professional-looking MVP without any upfront costs. Every single one of them is freemium-ing you in hopes that you’ll upgrade, but DO NOT UPGRADE until the money starts to roll in. We are debt-free in this MVP, people.

3. Focus on the core value: Make sure your MVP clearly communicates the main problem you’re solving and how you’re solving it.

4. Be ready to iterate: Remember, the purpose of an MVP is to learn. Be prepared to adjust your approach based on the feedback and data you collect. That said, you must collect data. As Noah Kagan advises in Million Dollar Weekend, share your idea with a few people (your top 10 customer dream list, maybe) and ask them to purchase a pre-order. If they don’t want to, ask why not. Figure out what they like about the idea. What they think about the price. If they are indeed having that problem you’re trying to solve. What they’re doing (if anything) to solve it now. That’s customer discovery research, baby.

5. Figure out how to get eyes: This is the bit I haven’t cracked yet. My MVP exists, but I don’t exactly have an audience to pitch it to. This is immensely easier for established creators or businesses that are creating the MVP of a new product. But if you’re starting from zero with a business idea, you can’t necessarily write it off if there are no takers in the early days… because you likely haven’t shared it to enough people for it to catch on. Some ideas for this:

• Leverage your personal network by sharing your MVP with friends, family, and professional contacts and asking them to spread the word if they find it valuable.
• Attempt to go viral on social media (not my scene, but I’ve seen this result in success for lots of new business ideas that are starting from scratch)
• Paid social ads (terrible idea, because we are determined not to spend any money until we have money coming in, but it could possibly be worth a $10 experiment)
• Partnerships and collaborations (find a company, organization, place, or influencer who has overlap with your ICP and pitch a partnership or collaboration opportunity to them). This is a way for you to leverage a large, existing audience without yet having one yourself. Ideas could include: guest blogging, podcast or IG live collab, giveaway, honest review, paid B2B2C arrangement, affiliate arrangement, and more.
• Freebie e-giveaway like a checklist or ebook (content creation for inbound interest)
• Join relevant Facebook groups, subreddits, or forums where your target audience hangs out; contribute some value; and then let it casually slide that you have a link to your MVP
• Attend free local networking events or meetups related to your industry, armed with an elevator pitch for your MVP.
• Launch your MVP on Product Hunt to reach early adopters and tech enthusiasts.
• How else? What ideas do y’all have?

By following these principles and using these free tools, I was able to quickly put together an MVP for Cocoon. Now, I can start collecting real-world data on whether there’s genuine interest in my idea before investing significant time and resources into full-scale development.

Remember, the goal isn’t perfection – it’s learning and validation. So don’t be afraid to put your idea out there, even if it feels a bit “hacky” at first. That’s exactly what an MVP is supposed to be!

Have you created an MVP using free or low-cost tools? I’d love to hear about your experiences! And I’d especially love your thoughts on how to spread an idea to assess demand for an MVP without spending any money.