Ask IH: What do you think about MVP quality?

I use to be a person who developed the entire product as the MVP before going live but this approach is not suitable at all. Why?

• You get burned out quickly. When I use to test products, I always build the entire system before advertising. This is OK at first but within time, you will feel burnt out.
• They don't have customers. as a person who has gone the same process as you describe, the number of customers I got was not a lot. Some products I tried didn't get any.
• Having a full product does not mean it will be successful. You don't know if it goes well. If it doesn't then you have spent your time and effect inefficiently.

After I learned this (the hard way), I start understanding the concept of MVP which should be a lot smaller than products are released on Producthunt. I now make an earlier version (validation product) than an MVP which explain my service first (and get early access users who maybe interested). I believe this process is better because you avoid burning money, effect. First validating to your customers is best.

I recommend making a validation page which should not take more than a day to make and talk to your target audience.

I think, too many people just consider the M, but not the V and the P. An MVP is a lot more than a buggy demo of what you intend to build. It has to be a viable product! An MVP for a payment processor could mean that it's only live in one country, for one currency and only for credit cards. But to be a viable product, it has to accept payments successfully. That's my criteria for the M in MVP: It should be useful for my first day customers, even if I'd stop adding features on day two.

MVP is just enough to keep the conversation with your users moving forward.

Defining an MVP definitely changes now that everyone is thinking that way. Since more people are getting things out earlier in the process, it still has to be differentiated in some way.

The biggest thing is an MVP has to solve a single, distinct problem. It doesn't have to do a lot of things for a lot of people, but it DOES have to do at least one thing really well.