Startups turn out to be a rather profitable business, therefore more and more people get involved into this innovative world. Each and every startup share one common secret of their success. It’s hidden in a simple algorithm: first, you create a new and ingenious product, then you present it to accelerators, get investments from your angels and launch its manufacture, afterwards, if you get really lucky and the product you came up with is a real unicorn, your company may face the exit, which means you’ll become a billionaire.

This startup slang may be a bit hard to understand for those who have never inquired about the actual process of building a startup business. In fact, it is pretty simple to understand if put in other words: you need an idea, investments to implement this idea in life and if this idea is really fresh and striking, the product may be bought by international conglomerates (which happened with Instagram bought by Facebook, which is called an exit).

However, launching the product with all its great and expensive features is pretty risky because you never know the reaction of your target audience. Thus, in product development, they came up with a minimum viable product (MVP), which contains the basic features for the product to be able to function but doesn’t contain any additional perks that can attract more customers. MVP is launched in order to track the client’s feedback and calculate whether the final product will be worth the risk taken. Before launching your MVP, there are 7 certain things you do need to know, for they may secure your startup.

1. Make it minimum indeed

Quite often entrepreneurs experience failures in launching their MVP’s because they make one dreadful mistake: instead of making it a pure MVP, they keep trying to squeeze some beneficial features in it. For example, you want to launch mugs that heat the liquid inside themselves. The cheapest mugs to produce will be white. Instead, you launch red ones because red is your favorite color and you think it will attract more buyers. And this is your huge mistake, for the real purpose of your MVP, again, is not to attract clients but to trace their reaction. In this case, you’ll get totally false data, that will spoil you the entire picture: red cups will be sold much better (or worse) than simple white ones and, as a result, you won’t know the real answer on what mugs are better to launch in order not to get in debt.

2. Don’t forget about your logo

Before you even think of launching MVP’s, you already need to have a logo, your trademark that would be placed on your innovative products. Which is why your company’s and product’s recognition will depend on it. Your logo should assist your packaging design, that’s why take a close look at your design brief in order to understand what you really want. When your design brief is completely ready, you should find a person who’ll design  this logo perfectly for you. Along with design studios, it’s becoming rather popular (and cheap) to create logos on crowd sourcing platforms (e.g. designcontest.com) .

3. A sufficient base for your future

MVP should be a strong foundation for your product’s future development, that’s why make sure it really works and won’t disappoint your clients in terms of technical crashes. Though it should be simple, nobody has cancelled its reliability. The better your MVP is from the technical point, the more successful your future products with all the perks will be.

4. Minimizing costs

MVP is a great example of a successful product at a minimum prime cost. As far as your startup business is still not secure, saving your money will be the best guarantee that you won’t fail. Which is why it’s vital for you to minimize your expenses as much as you can and still create a reliable product. It sounds difficult but yet is possible to do. Take a look at those factors that will enable you to save money: your team, ads or some details that can be bought at a lower price or can be avoided at all.

5. Early customer relationships

MVP helps you get in touch with your clients even before they buy your product. In addition to that, it helps you understand what your customers expect from your product and your company right now and in the future, which makes you prepared to everything. Ensure you’re doing everything possible to strengthen these relations, receive feedback and improve everything that needs to be improved.

6. Identify the core business functions

MVP helps you concentrate on what you want to get from your business in the future. Sort out your priorities and don’t get distracted: thus, you’ll achieve your business goals much faster.

7. Get to the market

A.S.A.P. Before your competitors did it. The sooner you present your MVP, the better your result will be. Especially if you work in the market niche that has become really hot recently because of some startup projects that have experienced the exit. Hot niches are much more difficult to work in because of all the competitors, that’s why your quick reaction may actually save the day.

The article originally appeared on Medium