Essay · 8 min read

The MVP is dead. Long live the RAT.

Rik Higham · HackerNoon Free Beginner

This is the essay that named the problem: an MVP quietly pushes you to build a whole product when what you actually need is to test one thing. Higham makes the case for the Riskiest Assumption Test (RAT), building only enough to learn whether your single biggest unknown holds. It is the sharpest starting point for deciding what to test instead of what to build.

  • An MVP is not really a product, it is a way to test whether you have found a problem worth solving, so treat it as a test, not a launch.
  • Find your largest unknown and build only what is needed to test it, nothing more.
  • The goal is to maximise the rate of learning by minimising the time to try things, so pick the assumption that would kill the idea if it were wrong.
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The question it answers

  1. How do I decide the single riskiest assumption my MVP should test instead of trying to prove the whole idea at once?

Read with it

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  2. The book that gave the world 'MVP', 'build-measure-learn', and 'validated learning'. It reframes a startup as a series of... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  3. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  4. Video · ~13 min How to Plan an MVP Michael Seibel (YC)
  5. Video · ~20 min How To Talk To Users | Startup School Gustaf Alstromer
  6. The Test Card is a one-page worksheet that forces a vague market-size belief into four fields: what we believe, how we will... Strategyzer Template · one-page worksheet Test Card Strategyzer (Alexander Osterwalder)
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