The MVP Curve

Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) have been extremely influential in the startup community. They help mitigate the risk of spending loads of time and money building something that nobody wants. Unfortunately, the rise of the MVP has led to many people releasing products that are not actually viable. Let me explain.

Imagine if I decided to make a calendar app. Nobody would use the MVP of my calendar app because there are already hundreds of fully-developed, beautiful-looking calendar apps. The only way I could sell my calendar app is if the MVP was much better than all the apps out there.

On the other hand, if I decided to make a software that helps patients affected by a disease that only 50 people get each year, the design and experience of the software does not to be nearly as sophisticated.

It is clear that certain classes of products have higher barriers to entry for MVPs than others. I decided to visualize this with a graph:

The more unique the problem you are trying to solve, the less time you have to spend on the design and user experience of the MVP. Instead you can focus on the core functionality of the product, and users will figure out the rest.

Most people forget that MVPs need to be viable. The next time you work on a MVP, make sure you define what minimum viability truly means. In some cases, the “minimum” that you need to is not so minimum.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 332,253+ people.

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