5 Essential Steps to Create a Mobile App MVP That Will Attract Investors

How to Build an MVP That Attracts Investors

An idea is only the beginning. When it comes to raising investments, inspiration alone won’t secure funding. Investors don’t back dreams — they invest in real solutions with proven value and clear potential for growth. That’s why the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is such a powerful tool.

What is an MVP?

An MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is the simplest functional version of your product. Its main purpose isn’t just to showcase your idea, but to prove its real-world value. It should deliver a core feature that solves a specific user problem — even in its most basic form.

How to Build an Investor-Ready MVP

🔹 Step 1: Define Your Requirements Start by clarifying the problem your app is solving and who your ideal user is. Keep the focus tight — only include essential features that bring direct value.

🔹 Step 2: Choose the Right Development Partner Your choice of developers can make or break the project. Ideally, partner with a team that understands startup dynamics and knows how to build scalable MVPs designed for market validation.

🔹 Step 3: Create a Specification and Test a Prototype Before you dive into development, build a clickable prototype and test it with a focus group. Early feedback can save months of unnecessary revisions and help you fine-tune the core concept.

🔹 Step 4: Develop and Test the App Once you’ve validated the prototype, move forward with development. Even a minimal version must offer a clear and useful experience. Always run internal QA and user tests before release.

🔹 Step 5: Launch and Collect Feedback Release your MVP to the market. Real-world feedback is priceless — it helps refine your product and demonstrates early traction, which is exactly what investors want to see.

Other Ways to Attract Investment:

Startup accelerators

Government or private grants

Crowdfunding platforms

Strategic partnerships

Why MVPs Win Over Investors

Approaching an investor with only an idea is high-risk — especially if your concept can be easily copied or iterated on by others. But arriving at the table with an MVP, real user data, and proven demand changes the conversation entirely.

💡 The bottom line: An MVP should not only demonstrate your concept — it must deliver real, measurable value to your target audience from day one.

Step 1: Define MVP Requirements

The very first step toward building an investor-friendly MVP is to outline clear and practical requirements. Your MVP should meet both user expectations and investor expectations from the very start.

A well-structured MVP in the eyes of an investor always has one key ingredient — a monetization formula.

Here’s a simple way to visualize it:

Number of Users (over 10,000)
× Price of Paid Features
× Frequency of User Demand (monthly repeatability)
= Projected Revenue

💡 Keep in mind: App Store platforms, such as Apple’s App Store, usually charge a 30% commission on in-app purchases. You must clearly understand which payments will be subject to these fees. Apple provides detailed guidance on this on their official site.

Once you have a clear picture of your audience size and monetization model, you're ready to move on to the next step!

Step 2: Choose the Right Development Company

The second step is to focus on choosing a development partner, rather than jumping straight into writing a technical specification (Tech Spec). Why? Because unless you are an experienced IT professional, it’s extremely challenging to create a detailed and technically sound document that covers all the nuances.

It's much more efficient to let your future development team handle the technical descriptions and technology choices — they know best how to turn your idea into reality.

In the next step, we’ll share some tips on how you, as the project initiator, can prepare user stories and other helpful materials to reduce the cost and time needed for drafting a proper Tech Spec. (Spoiler: nobody can describe the user journey better than you.)

What makes a development company a great fit for a mobile startup? ✅ Regional teams without corporate “giant” clients. If a company isn’t locked into years of commitments with large corporations (like many major city agencies), you are more likely to get flexible, enthusiastic, and reasonably priced collaboration — especially for MVPs. You also reduce the risk of your project being sidelined if a bigger client demands immediate attention.

✅ Transparency about pricing from day one. It’s common for MVP estimates to vary widely, especially if you haven’t yet prepared a detailed Tech Spec. Reliable developers will still provide clear, honest estimates, even at the early stages.

✅ Detailed commercial proposals. Pay attention to companies that present estimates broken down by specific tasks and the number of man-hours per feature. The more questions they ask during the briefing phase, the more seriously they treat your project.

✅ Flexible contracts and staged payments. Before signing anything, study the company’s NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and sample contract. Always discuss the possibility of milestone-based payments tied to tangible deliverables — such as:

After the design phase: all design assets and vector-format mockups are handed over.

After the layout phase: fully completed and pixel-perfect implementation of approved designs.

If the company resists milestone-based collaboration or prefers vague, all-inclusive packages, treat that as a red flag.

Step 3: Create a Technical Specification & Build a Prototype for Focus Groups

Once you've chosen your development partner, the next step is to prepare a Technical Specification (Tech Spec) and assemble a clickable prototype to test your product with focus groups.

How to draft a Tech Spec by yourself: ✅ Document all user scenarios — not just the ideal ones. Make sure to account for edge cases and real-world situations. For example:

What happens if the user loses internet connection during a transaction?

What if an incoming call interrupts the process? A well-designed app should gracefully handle these cases, such as caching unsent data for automatic submission once the connection is restored.

✅ Research your target audience’s devices. Understand which smartphone models are most commonly used by your future users and ensure your app’s functionality fits their technical capabilities. This will help you define the minimum supported OS versions in the Tech Spec — and keep the development costs under control. Supporting older systems often leads to higher costs.

✅ Design a consistent and user-friendly interface. Your UX should remain intuitive and predictable across devices. For example: If you offer biometric login via Touch ID, remember that not all devices support this feature. Users upgrading to a new device during the lifecycle of your app should still be able to configure biometrics — not only during initial registration but also later, in the profile settings.

Poorly designed scenarios don’t always “break” your app, but they can quickly add up and frustrate users. A bad experience can turn into a snowball effect and drive away your audience. Worse yet, some overlooked cases may critically damage usability. For example: If your app requires filling out long forms, what happens when the user receives a call mid-process? Will all the data be lost? If so, who’s to blame — the developer, or the incomplete Tech Spec?

✅ System Architecture Designing the interaction between your database, server, client app, and admin panel is highly technical. This part should be handled by experienced professionals to avoid costly mistakes.

💡 Alternative: Let developers write the Tech Spec Most software agencies will offer to handle the technical documentation for you. All you need to do is answer their questions clearly. In many cases, the Tech Spec is written alongside UI/UX design and prototyping — which is both efficient and cost-effective.

🧠 Prototype First: Test Before You Build Once your screen designs are ready, you can assemble a clickable prototype to test user journeys and identify design flaws early — before development starts. Free tools like InVision, Moqups, and Marvelapp are great for this purpose.

🏆 The Golden Middle A smart and cost-effective approach is to:

Describe all user scenarios yourself.

Create and illustrate them using prototypes.

Hand these materials to the developers for final Tech Spec drafting.

This way you’ll minimize both miscommunication and development costs. The clearer your input, the less time developers will need to prepare the final documentation — and the fewer surprises you’ll face during development.

Step 4: Develop and Test Your Application

The development process is usually straightforward — once you have a clear Technical Specification (Tech Spec) and finalized designs, developers can efficiently move forward.

But when it comes to testing, this stage deserves extra attention.

A professional development team should not only deliver the application, but also provide a detailed testing report.

Ideally, this report should include:

✔️ Closed checklists — confirming that each user scenario described in the Tech Spec has been tested and passed successfully. ✔️ Device and platform coverage — the report must specify which smartphones, tablets, and operating systems were used for testing. This ensures that the application behaves as expected on all supported devices.

Thorough testing helps avoid unexpected bugs post-release and demonstrates to both stakeholders and future investors that your MVP is stable and production-ready.

Step 5: Publish Your Application

The fifth and final step is publishing your app to the marketplaces.

On one hand, this feels like the finish line — but there’s one critical note to keep in mind:

💡 Never schedule marketing activities or product presentations based on a fixed date before your app has passed the App Store review process.

Why? Imagine organizing a launch event or investor demo, only to discover at the last minute that your app hasn’t been approved yet and is unavailable for download. A situation like that can damage both your reputation and the success of your launch.

✅ The safest approach is:

Submit your app for review first.

Once approval is confirmed and the app is available in the store, finalize and announce your launch date.

This simple precaution will save you from unnecessary stress and ensure a smooth product rollout.

Final Thoughts

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for your mobile app is more than just a necessary first step in the product development process—it’s your gateway to attracting potential investors and setting your app up for long-term success. By carefully defining your MVP’s requirements, selecting the right development team, and ensuring thorough testing and feedback, you not only minimize risks but also create a strong foundation for your app to grow.

Remember, a well-crafted MVP serves as both a proof of concept and a tool for securing investment, so it’s crucial to get it right. Focus on solving a real problem for your target audience, create a seamless user experience, and ensure that your app delivers value from day one. Once you have a solid MVP, you can confidently approach investors with a product that speaks for itself.

Take your time, plan each step carefully, and ensure that your MVP aligns with both user needs and investor expectations. With the right strategy, your app’s journey from idea to launch will be set for success.