Minimum Viable Team

How do you define a team? How about a Minimum Viable Team?

Entrepreneur Daniel Priestley describes it comme ça:

“The harsh truth is that business is a team sport, and for it to be an enjoyable experience, you need to have the right number of people on the team. You need a Key Person of Influence, who’s the face of the campaign, an assistant salesperson, a “Swiss Army knife” (a generalist), and a customer success specialist, who looks after people when they become customers. That’s your minimum viable team.”

Personally, I wondered whether you could scale it back to just three people with a shared vision and propensity to create.

I’ve always felt that a triad is the best starting point. But is that viable? Or it just a romantic fairy tale?

I’ve certainly seen teams of just 3 developers who created fantastic products and MVPs and, given the right ecosystem, their product have flourished almost organically and exponentially. But it’s also quite rare. And in some markets almost impossible.

As a result, Priestley’s MVT is sales-heavy because he views viability through the lens of market traction - an entirely valid stance for entrepreneurial ventures.

But from a Liftoff perspective, viability also includes team dynamics and creative emergence: can this system learn its way forward together? This is especially the case in completely novel circumstances or when seeking disruptive solutions.

So although, Priestley’s MVT rightly ensures economic viability, it doesn’t necessarily ensure creative and adaptive viability. Or put differently: MVT + Team Liftoffs should supercharge the endeavour.

What’s your working definition of an MVT?