When starting a business, especially one in the IT sector, it’s critical to ensure that your product or service is viable and free of major defects. A prototype or proof of concept can be incredibly useful in this situation.

90% of startups fail with approximately 22% failing in the first year. This means that whatever you can do to keep your company from going out of business will benefit you.

Over the last decade, there has been a considerable trend in and adoption of innovative methods that focus on becoming more agile incorporating iteration into development processes and speeding up organizational learning in government. These strategies are designed to make better use of public funds by determining what works and what doesn’t as soon as possible.

The proof of concept, prototypes and even Minimal Viable Products as methods for testing and creating solutions (MVPs) all share a common goal that is:

• Determine and examine assumptions through “making things real” and putting them to the test.
• Learn faster by figuring out what works and what doesn’t without investing a lot of time or money.

We’ll look at what a proof of concept is and what a prototype is in this article. We’ll discuss which option is ideal for your company’s needs, as well as whether any other related concepts can be used for your startup.

1. What is a Proof of Concept (POC)?

A proof of concept, often known as a ‘POC’ or ‘proof of principle’ is a quick test that is used to determine whether a startup idea is viable. A proof of concept (POC) essentially proves that your concept will be successful and, more crucially, profitable. A proof of concept can also be useful to exhibit to potential investors to secure funds before beginning to develop your product or service.

1.1 How can you build the ideal proof of concept?

A proof of concept’s main advantage is that it can save you time and money. If your product or service is viable, that’s terrific. You can either determine whether your idea is worth saving or go back to the paper board and start over.

When establishing your proof of concept, ask yourself the following questions:

• What distinguishes my product or service?
• Who is my competition, and how does my product or service differentiate itself from them?
• What is the demographic of my target market? What problems do they have that my product or service can help them with?
• What is the market situation? Is there anything I should be aware of right now or in the future?
• How many funds will I need to get started, and where will I acquire them?

A simple Proof of Concept can be made in Word or Google Docs. You can also create a presentation in PowerPoint or Google Slides to deliver to an investor if you’re looking for something more spectacular.

2. What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a representation of your product or service that you may test out. Before you go to the market you and your team can utilize this to gather feedback and detect any potential difficulties.

A prototype can assist you in identifying and resolving any problems with your product or service. When it comes to spotting possible errors, you and your team should be as rigorous as possible. It’s possible to fix them now rather than later after you’ve gone live.

What level of detail should your prototype have? It is debatable. An example of a prototype is:

• Low fidelity: Simple to design, such as a storyboard or flow chart:
• Medium fidelity: Like a wireframe but more sophisticated than a low fidelity prototype.
• High fidelity: High fidelity refers to an exceedingly detailed model and as near to the final result as possible such as a fully functional website or app. These prototypes take longer to build and are more costly.

You have the option of cycling through all of these prototypes. For example, you may start with a simple design of the app progress to wireframe and then develop the app partially.

When you have a concept about a solution but are unsure about how it will appear, feel or work prototypes should be employed. The testing results can then be used to enhance the concept. You may optimize what you discover and fine-tune your idea by developing and upgrading the prototype. This allows you to transition from a version with little depth or functionality such as a rough outline that displays the concept to one with a lot more giving test users a better sense of how it works.

Prototypes are also a good approach to getting your stakeholders involved in developing a shared vision or finding common ground for a solution. With the rise of design-driven innovation in government, prototyping has become a popular approach for people to test and develop ideas.

3. What’s the difference between an MVP, a Proof of Concept and a Prototype?

An MVP is a basic version of your product or service that is introduced with the bare minimum of features. It is a vital aspect of the lean startup technique.

MVP has two significant advantages. The first is that you will be capable of launching your product or service sooner. Customers rarely utilize nearly half of all functionalities in a product, so eliminating them can save you a deal of time and resources.

The second benefit is that you can use your MVP to collect useful feedback from your clients which will aid in the development of your product or service.

Prototypes, proof of ideas and MVPs may appear to be similar at first sight but they are all very different.

Here’s a table that further divides things down:

Basis	Proof of Concept	Prototype	Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Definition	To justify additional development, test the feasibility of your idea or assumption.	To learn from and identify assumptions, test how an idea might work, look or feel.	To add value, you must test the viability of the essential core of your solution in action and constantly implement it.
When is it used in the Process?	Initial Stage	Initial stage	Live testing
What are you putting to the test?	An assumption	A concept	The core of a solution
Test Objective	You have an idea and want to test if it’s true.	You have an idea and want to put it to the test to examine how well it works and what you can learn from it.	You’ve developed the core of the solution and want to see if there’s a market for it. If not, you’ll need to modify your strategy.
When to Consider a test success or proven?	When an assumption is feasible.	When the concept works as expected.	When there is demand and the solution works as expected.
Audience	Internal stakeholders and investors.	Users, citizens, sponsors and decision-makers.	Real Users
Development Time	Few hours or a few days.	Few hours, days or weeks.	Continuous
Cost	Up to 1,000 GBP	Up to 5,000 GBP	From 100K up to millions.

4. Which should your company use: a prototype or a proof of concept?

If you’re starting a business and want to increase your likelihood of succeeding, we recommend employing a prototype and a proof of concept.

This is especially true if you’re developing software or a mobile application. Given that an app might cost upwards of $120,000 to develop, you’ll want to make sure it’s perfect the first time it’s released.

Let’s return to the POC vs MVP vs prototype debate and pretend you’re working on an app. You may use all three elements in your startup notion.

• You create a proof of concept to ensure that your idea is feasible and will not flop as well as a funding proposal.
• You create a prototype to test how your app will perform and find any bugs before it goes live.
• Finally, you finish your MVP and release your app to the public.

You could skip the POC stage if you’re sure of your product or service’s viability, or if you have a lot of successful opponents to analyze. We believe it is worth the time because most people can put together a proof of concept in a good few hours.

The prototype stage is more difficult to assess because prototypes take longer to develop. You might bypass this stage and move straight to launching an MVP if you want to get to market as soon as feasible.

Keep in mind that if your MVP is released with any deep shortcomings, time and money will be squandered trying to address them, as well as unfavourable Publicity.

Keep in mind that your prototype doesn’t have to be complex or costly. A low-fidelity prototype such as a sketch may be sufficient depending on your product or service. What matters is that you can use it to find possible issues.

5. Conclusion

Both a POC and a prototype can help you discover any possible defects with your startup idea allowing you to come to market faster and with fewer mistakes.

Returning to our original topic of ‘proof of concept vs prototype’ which is the greatest solution for your company?  Both are important and since they’re employed at different stages of the startup process there is no reason why you should not use them both.

So, before you start planning marketing campaigns or appealing for money get those proofs-of-concept and prototypes up and running!

TechDel is the best mobile app development company based in London. We have a team of talented developers and designers who can specialize in producing exceptional apps and designing prototypes of the apps that help your business thrive. For more details, please visit TechDel Mobile App Services.