MVP Lessons in Christina Tosi’s bakery
The following text is inspired by a documentary that runs on Netflix®, and you might need an account to follow up the story. I’ll do my best to recreate the experience.
I’m interested in learning more each day on how to build a safe environment to innovate in an indefinitely sustainable pace: to produce under pressure and deliver the best products and services without an impact at the wellbeing of a team or a person. I guess I’ve seen during my career many talented people burned down and too many great ideas neglected.
An idea is a fragile construct that faces many problems from an early stage. Something as simple as fear can erase it, and something as dangerous as Ego can inflate it until it turns into a Hydra that defends with many bad versions of itself. After learning what constant work and disciplined actions that follow to a critical mindset can do to an idea, I started to distance myself from concepts like luck, coincidence, and focus on creating conditions for work backed up by an educated intuition and causalities. That’s one of many of my takes after reading “How to fly a horse — the secret history of creation, invention, and discovery” by Kevin Ashton.
An idea needs a person who is willing to work very hard and finds itself in an environment where trust is the primary currency. And so it seems it also happens in a kitchen.
Enter Christina Tosi, zoom in.
There is always an opportunity to relate to a role that appears on a screen. You end up knowing a person or at least feel you do. That smile, such character, the drive, the bold expressions make an impact, and so you imagine you are in the presence of a friend. That’s the hidden power of the series of Netflix’ documentaries called “Chef’s table.” In a blink, you are part of their kitchen. And literally, I am watching these series in front of the sink in my kitchen while I do the dishes, so I guess there might be some bias from my part.
David Chang, Momofuku’s chef-founder needs help. Wylie Dufresne connects him with Christina Tosi who embodies at that time the role of an operations manager that can help Momofuku’s system (24:51 in the documentary). Christina has the best first impression someone can have: the boss leads from example (Chang’s mopping the floor fixing something). Christina receives a challenge-invitation-order from Dave asking for his “family-meal” so she prepares a new version of her Crack Pie® with Miso. Bear on mind that the famous Crack Pie® was born in WD-50 as part of the family meal and that by making this pie she was then fulfilling a _right of passage_, testing her skills with a crowd of cooks. Some challenge for a product. (20:43 in the documentary). Let’s call this MVP 1.2. That is a new version of a product that was celebrated before and can have a new ingredient. We can make a pause here and cut.
Still MVP
Back in 2011 Eric Ries made the Minimum Viable Product a core component of the Lean Startup Model and defined it as:
“A minimum viable product (MVP) helps entrepreneurs start the process of learning as quickly as possible. It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort.” (1)
It has been a long time since Lean Startup hit the shelves and the news of its demise are popping up from time to time: Carlos Benyeto says: “The MVP is dead, long life to the MAP (Minimum Awesome Product)”; Rick Highman, “The MVP is dead. Long live the RAT” focusing on assumptions and its tests; Rafayel Mkrtchyan invites us to ask ourselves “Is MVP Dead? What You Should Know about MVP and MAP”. But in my experience MVPs are just getting started at an enterprises level and big business so they will be here for a while.
Instead of click-baiting around the epitaph of the MVP, consider what happens when you run an experiment. Sometimes there is a Return On Investment, ROI (now there is a term that we should be digging its grave); Sometimes, the market reacts, and you can start planning how to scale it; but no matter what, the team learns a great deal and gains confidence, reassurance, they start believing that it can be real. MVPs are a compelling argument that someone is making the right question.
From a product discovery stance, the Crack Pie® with Miso is a test of an idea in a secure and critical environment (sort of a Sandbox). There is a talented person that makes a treat for a group of trained-to-taste-only-the-best-and-be-picky consumers where she validates the quality and the skill she needs to reproduce it, and by their reaction, she learned that her product is a success. And that is a very close definition to what a Minimum Viable Product is and must face.
Back to Christina and her trials at Momofuku
Christina Tosi seems to be a remarkable woman, and by the looks of her team, she can lead from a conscious and loving place. But this all comes from my imagination so let’s stick to the script. After working with Wylie Dufresne, Christina confesses that hear goals at WD-50 where getting to a halt. The next step was becoming a Pastry Chef, and that was not her intention nor her dream. She ends helping David Chang, and we pick from there with a second MVP that needs to be at the menu. But Christina (at that time I would like to assign her the role of Product Owner) feels that the desserts that she’s cooking are not “fancy” enough for the menu.
The Product Owner understands value. It may not be easy to express nor represent, but the system expects that someone has an understanding of the value that delivers. On an MVP value may be hidden and its part of its nature to reveal it. That’s why we measure, to learn, to change, to scale. Christina is under pressure, and Dave demands a dessert, so she goes “super-duper American” and prepares a Strawberry Shortcake that turns into an MVP 2 that is well received and express “Layers of intelligence with crazy going on” (30:20 in the documentary).
In this new iteration of Christina’s work in Momofuku, Dave validates a couple of hypotheses: that Christina “loves to cook and refuses to do it,” “she still needs an outlet to express herself” and “the only way to do is to push her off the cliff.” MVPs are not just a product that goes to production and generates revenue. They’re also an expression of a team that will enable soon more solutions, better and bolder. We learn from the MVP if we have the power to deliver throughput in tight lead times.
Then comes discovery. Since Christina has her will to cook back, she now makes part of a new endeavor, a tasting menu only restaurant one of those collections of several dishes where surprise is the primary goal, and she’s responsible for dessert. The third MVP that we know of is on an inception and creativity state. Christina knows that the right product to offer is a Panna Cotta and in her words “is kind of boring.” In that gap of solving a problem, appears a solution aligned with the previous MVPs where she’s ready to leap into innovation: cereal milk as flavor. There are enough limitations to create a unique product, and so it happens: “When you eat it you’re immediately at your childhood” says Dave Chang.
MVP 3 is born as a Cereal Milk Panna Cotta, and it has the signatures of creativity: hard work behind, bold moves, childish and playful intentions, and something hidden that can scale to a different level. I can only speak from what I see in the documentary, and I’m sure there where many iterations and many other products but from the edited side of the story that we can see there’s a pipeline with a meaningful value from end to end. When something like this happens, there is an opportunity for a spin-off.
I’m not sure if the Momofuku Milkbar is an MVP 4 or is it a first one from a new stream of value, but I’m sure that there is no way to get there if it wasn’t the way it happened. It emerged thanks to a conscious collection of decisions where the product was taken care of, and the ideas protected. You cannot jump from a restaurant in peril to a milk bar that serves a never tried before flavor. That’s not how it works. You build upon mistakes and celebrations — embrace MVP.
Christina at the end says that Dave gave her permission to feel brave enough to state: “I don’t owe anyone anything and I don’t actually need anyone permission.” It seems character flows in MVPs.
(1) Ries, Eric. (2011). The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (p. 93). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
