Company Context

TaskFlow is a Series A B2B SaaS startup that sells workflow software to small service businesses such as marketing agencies, accounting firms, and legal practices. The company has 1,200 paying teams and strong retention among larger customers, but its self-serve product for small teams is underperforming.

Problem

TaskFlow wants to launch a new lightweight MVP aimed at teams with fewer than 20 employees. Research shows these customers are not looking for a full project management suite; they mainly want a simple way to assign work, track deadlines, and avoid status-update chaos across email and chat. The team has identified six candidate features for the MVP: task assignment, due dates and reminders, Kanban board, recurring tasks, Slack integration, time tracking, and custom reporting.

Internal data shows that trial-to-paid conversion for small teams is only 6%, compared with 14% for mid-market customers. User interviews suggest the current product feels too complex and takes too long to set up. Leadership believes a focused MVP could raise conversion and shorten time-to-value, but engineering capacity is limited and the launch must happen this quarter.

Deliverables

1. Define the target user segment and their core job to be done for this MVP.
2. Explain how you would prioritize the candidate features and decide what belongs in the initial release.
3. Recommend the MVP feature set and justify the trade-offs versus features you would defer.
4. Define success metrics and an approach to validate whether the MVP is solving the right problem.
5. Identify the biggest risks in shipping too little or too much.

Constraints

• MVP must launch within 10 weeks.
• Team capacity: 3 engineers, 1 designer, 1 PM.
• No major backend re-architecture is possible.
• Existing customers must not experience disruption from the new MVP experience.
• Leadership expects a measurable improvement in trial-to-paid conversion within 90 days of launch.