Minimum Viable Product

Also called MVP

Minimum viable product: the simplest version of your product that lets real users experience the core value and gives you real learning, with the least effort. Not a rough draft, but a focused first cut.

Why it matters

The MVP exists to test whether people actually want what you are building before you pour months into it. Founders who skip it, or gold-plate it, waste their scarcest resource, time, on features nobody asked for.

For example

Airbnb's MVP was a simple site offering air mattresses in the founders' own apartment, enough to test whether strangers would pay to stay.

Go deeper

Making Sense of MVP Crisp · article The famous skateboard-to-car drawing that fixes the most common MVP mistake: shipping half a product instead of a whole small one. Open blog.crisp.se →

How to Plan an MVP Y Combinator · video The most-cited practical talk on scoping a first product: hold the problem and customer tight, and cut everything else. Watch on YouTube youtube.com →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Building the product, part of the Starting Up hub.

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