Building the Product

What's the difference between an MVP and just a cheap, half-finished product?

A starting point

An MVP is a learning tool with a clear hypothesis attached; a cheap product is just a bad product. The point isn't to spend less money, it's to buy the most learning per week. If you can't say what specific belief your MVP will confirm or kill, you're building the wrong thing.

Go deeper

Read

📖 Book
Paid Beginner

The Lean Startup

From theleanstartup.com by Eric Ries ~330 pages

Why we picked it

The origin text for the modern MVP and validated-learning vocabulary every founder now uses. Read it for the mental model that a startup is a series of experiments, not a single bet.

  • Progress = validated learning, not features shipped.
  • Run the Build-Measure-Learn loop as fast as you can.
  • An MVP is a learning tool, not a cheap product.
Open theleanstartup.com →
📄 Article
Free Intermediate

Perfection by Subtraction, The Minimum Feature Set

From steveblank.com by Steve Blank ~8 min read

Why we picked it

The customer-development originator's clearest statement on scoping the minimum feature set to reach your earliest believers. The sharpest antidote to feature creep in v1.

  • Ship the smallest set your earlyvangelists will actually pay for.
  • Extra features before fit are engineering waste.
  • The MVP is a Customer Development tactic, get it into users' hands fast.
Open steveblank.com →

People also ask

What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to test your single riskiest assumption, not a shrunken version of your dream product. Ask 'what's the ... Beginner 3 resources → How do I decide which features to cut from v1? Cut everything that doesn't help you learn whether people want the core thing. Pick the one workflow your earliest, most desperate customers need a... Beginner 3 resources → How long should building an MVP take? Weeks, not months. If your MVP will take more than 4-8 weeks, your scope is wrong, not your timeline. Airbnb, Stripe, and Twitch all launched narro... Beginner 3 resources → Should I build an MVP at all, or can I validate without one? If you haven't talked to ~20-30 potential customers yet, don't build anything, you're not validating, you're procrastinating in code. A concierge M... Beginner 3 resources → How do I get my first users for the MVP? Recruit them by hand, one conversation at a time, this is the whole point of an early startup. Go to where your users already are, DM them, email t... Beginner 2 resources → What business model should I choose for my startup? Don't 'choose' a model in a vacuum, copy the model that already works in your customers' world and improve one thing about it. Recurring revenue (s... Beginner 3 resources →