What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Of all the buzzwords in Silicon Valley, none is more abused than MVP. Founders often use it as an excuse to ship sloppy code. “It’s just an MVP,” they say, as the app crashes for the third time. This is a misunderstanding of the term that can kill your reputation.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development.

The key words are “Viable” and “Feedback.” An MVP is not a half baked cake. It is a cupcake. It is small, but it is complete and delicious. If you serve raw dough and call it an MVP, customers will not give you feedback on the flavor. They will just tell you it is raw.

To build a proper MVP, you must stop thinking about features and start thinking about hypotheses. What is the one thing that must be true for your business to succeed?

If you are building Uber, the hypothesis is: “People are willing to get into a stranger’s car.” The MVP to test this is not a complex app with GPS tracking and automated payments. The MVP is a simple SMS service where you text a number and a car shows up. If no one texts, the fancy app is worthless.

The MVP is a tool for “validated learning.” It is designed to answer a specific question with the least amount of effort possible.

There are many ways to build an MVP without writing a single line of code.

• The Wizard of Oz MVP: The front end looks real, but the back end is manual. Zappos started this way. The founder went to shoe stores, took photos, posted them online, and when someone bought a pair, he bought them from the store and shipped them himself.
• The Concierge MVP: You do the service manually for a single customer. Instead of building an AI travel agent, you act as the travel agent for five friends to see where the friction points are.
• The Landing Page MVP: You describe the product and ask for an email or a pre-order. This tests demand before supply.

The tension lies in balancing “Minimum” and “Viable.”

If you focus too much on Minimum, you ship a product that provides no value. Users churn immediately.

If you focus too much on Viable, you fall into the trap of feature creep. You spend six months building “just one more thing” and delay the launch. This increases the risk that you are building something nobody wants.

To find the balance, ask yourself: “Does this allow the user to complete the core loop?” If the answer is yes, ship it. If the answer is no, keep building.

When you launch an MVP, you are targeting Early Adopters. These people are forgiving. They tolerate bugs because they are desperate for a solution to their problem.

However, you must be honest with them. Do not market your MVP as a polished enterprise solution. Market it as a beta. Invite them into the development process. If you manage expectations correctly, your early users become co-creators who provide the critical feedback loop you need to iterate toward product-market fit.