Minimum Viable Product – A god still worth praying to?
For years now, there is no escaping the Minimum Viable Product. But why? And why is that “P ” so misleading?

Minimum Viable Product – that’s what MVP stands for. It has established itself as the most desirable approach when it comes to developing pretty much anything on the web. Whether you are trying to launch a brand new startup or extending the feature set of an existing product or service, MVPs are the way to get it done. Why? The idea is to minimize your risks, which means lowering the amount of money needed to get things off the ground and to validate your product as quickly as possible. After all, you need to know whether or not there’s a market for your product and if so, does it fit the needs of said market?
Terminology Issues
It seems to be a logical and sound approach that is also cost-effective. But a lot of people aren’t aware that a Minimum Viable Product actually isn’t a product, at least at the beginning, and that’s where things are starting to get weird. It’s counterintuitive and mostly happened because of the terminology that Eric Ries, the (pretty much) inventor of the Lean Startup approach, has established. The first step that he considers to be part of an MVP approach is basically market research. And if you think about market research, suddenly it makes sense that a functional, useful product doesn’t have to be part of the equation right away. Because it’s nice to know whether people actually need your product before you start building it.
Personally, I believe that it is beneficial to differentiate between market research and MVP, because a website with an email signup form to gauge interest is not a product – much less a viable one. The Lean Startup Methodology by Eric Ries will argue against me though; declaring that all of this is part of the MVP itself. So keep that in mind when you read this article (just by being aware of this fact you probably already have more clarity about the fundamentals of MVPs than most folks out there). Case in point: If you google MVP, many explanations completely omit the market research portion and declare that an MVP is the most basic version of your product that people would want to use. Let me quote Wikipedia:
“A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development.”

This should highlight my concern that the terminology which Eric Ries has established is, unfortunately, somewhat counterintuitive. And I wasn’t cherry-picking here: It’s not just Wikipedia that defines an MVP as being a functional product, without ever mentioning market research as being part of the process. It’s only natural – no one who reads the words Minimum Viable Product would think about market research as being part of an MVP. Because the definition of the word product implies that it has to be something that’s useful for people. And for your users, market research is not.
You might think that my point is irrelevant to make, because once you’ve read Ries’ book, you’ll understand that market research is step one. I disagree with that notion because I believe that concepts should be named in a way that actually helps people understand them – which is not the case here. And let’s be frank: A lot of people who talk and write about MVPs and maybe even use the concept in the real world, probably haven’t read the book and never will. Making the usage of clear terminology all the more important.
So from here on out in this article I’ll define an MVP differently than Eric Ries does. As mentioned before, I’m splitting it into two parts:
- Market Research
- Building your MVP
Step 1: Market Research in an MVP context
So what exactly is market research in an MVP context? Companies have done market research way before the internet was a thing, it’s a very broad topic – which might sound intimidating and expensive at first. But more often than not you only need some of the tools in the market research toolbox in order to sufficiently gauge interest for your product. The most ubiquitous example that is usually given is the one I’ve already mentioned: An AdWords camaign with a landing page that has an email signup form; or a pricing table with three options and „Buy now“ buttons; or maybe just a single button that says „Download“. The idea is to find out if people are actually in need of a solution and if so, are they willing to pay for it (and if so: How much?). As you can see, just with one simple landing page and a few Dollars spent on an AdWords campaign, you can learn quite a bit about your potential users.
Step 2: Building your MVP

Once you have verified that there is indeed a market for your product, you can go ahead and start building an MVP – but, what exactly is a Minimum Viable Product? I came across a definition that I believe is spot on:
- It has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially
- It provides a feedback loop to guide future development
- It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters
Let’s have a closer look at each point.
1. It has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially
There are many things implied within this statement. First of all, you need to have a product that is valuable to people. This means that your product needs to solve a problem. Furthermore, your product must be good enough at solving this problem that people are willing to sign up, use it and, in the best case scenario, pay for it right away. Basically, think about the problem that you’re trying to solve and about the most basic feature-set you need to provide to people who are looking for a way to ease the pain they’re having.
2. It provides a feedback loop to guide future development
Eventually, you want to lose the MV in MVP. And in order to get there, you continually improve your product based on user feedback and the way these users interact with your MVP. This is real-life data that you can base your decisions on, no longer guesswork. And that’s why it’s so important to get the first version out the door as quickly as possible, because it gives you valuable insight into how your product is actually used by real people. It might be that these early adopters start using your product in unexpected ways that you didn’t even think about, giving you clues on how to pivot; it could also be that the feature you thought would be the most sought after is rarely used, revealing that you need to enhance other features that initially didn’t get your attention.
In order for this to work you have to make sure that you’ve set up an analytics tool to keep track of everything and possibly even have some KPIs defined that let you know whether your project is heading in the right direction. It’s also a great idea to get directly in touch with some users, so you can get feedback first hand – it’ll help you understand your users. And knowing what your users think and want is the first step towards tailoring your product to their needs.
3. It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters
Unfortunately, this point is a tricky one. Because a) while always nice, user retention might not be necessary for all kinds of products (e.g. selling an eBook) and b) even if user retention is a necessity, it might not be something that an MVP can manage to achieve right away. If you offer a subscription based product, there’s no doubt: You absolutely need to convince your users (well, not all, but a subset) to stick around. Even more so, you should strive to generate advocates: Users that are so happy with your product that they start spreading the message within their network. The potential for exponential growth lies here. I remember a talk by Sam Altman, it was in the context of Y Combinator startups, emphasizing just how important word of mouth is. So much so, that startups should try and cater to real advocates by directly getting in touch with such users and tailoring the product to their needs – as already mentioned in the previous point.
However, no matter how much market research and thought you’ve put into your MVP, it might not immediately be sticky. It could be that you first need to find out how your users are interacting with it in order to find ways to improve user retention. Which is ok – because, again, this ties in directly with the previous point. So, even though you’ll most likely need user retention to become a reality rather sooner than later, it might take some time to get there. That’s one of the things for what you’ll use your MVP.
Bringing it all together
This was quite a lot of information, so let’s sum it up in one sentence: “Distill your concept down to its purest form, find out whether people want to use it and if so, develop it piece by piece while always validating that each new feature fosters growth”. It sounds simple enough, but it’s pretty damn hard – because you have to be willing to regularly admit failure and correct your course accordingly. It also means that you’re always questioning whether you’re headed in the right direction – and this is the single most important aspect of an MVP, because you’ve created a feedback loop that, hopefully, guides you towards success.
If you manage to adhere to these concepts, the following benefits await (among others, but these are the ones you’re probably most interested in):
- financial risks are minimised
- product-market-fit validation is accelerated
- development resources aren’t wasted on useless features
So is an MVP a god still worth praying to? Well, maybe that’s a tad too biblical, but the key concept of rapid, user-centric development with a tight feedback loop is definitely here to stay.
