How embarrassing a MVP should be?
Hey hey Indie Community 👋
It's been quite some times now that I read posts of others on indie hackers. Trying to gauge myself to what should be a good enought first MVP. I'm insisting to "good enought" here. After all a MVP is low cost way to made to validate an idea.
But to be honest a lot of posts are showing amazing and polished products, almost ready to sell. It's crazy how better-than-good-enough those products are, don't you think ?
And I read everywhere how embarrasing a good MVP should be (ex: "The Lean Startup", "Sprint Idea" and countless blog posts). Like "fake-app-powerpoint" embarrassing level.
So I wonder now, maybe embarassing MVP exists only in stories ? Do you have a honest embarrasing MVP that is live right now ? Or maybe those MVPs are embarrasing only for its creator(s) ? Or maybe my definition of "embarrasing" is too low ? What do you think ? What is the good level for a MVP ? and if the answer is embarrasing, how embarrasing are we talking about ?
Ha, this post gave me a chuckle.
How embarrassing you ask? Well, not too embarrassing that your users are afraid to use it and give you money for it. But, no more polished than that tipping point. That's the sweet spot.
You'll hear this all the time, but, it depends on your users. People showing off their polished MVPs either have a lot of practice shipping, or they've iterated on their MVP before they shared it. Regardless, are you looking to impress people on IHs or are you trying to make money? Building a business imo is very humbling. So check your pride, and take IH with a grain of salt :)
Hey Allison ! I do hear your point about cheking my pride. Indeed it's even crucial as it can make the difference between starting or not.
For the point of "not too embarrassing", maybe it's a good signal after all. If users are afraid and I am able to learn it, I guess I'm better off knowing it. As for finding a good story of "good enough" on IH, you're right, finding posts that aren't in pitch mode is hard.
I was looking at Fantasy Congress (nice concept btw!) : how was it look like when you showed it to your first users (who where perfect strangers) ? And how did you get their feedbacks ?
I just read your blog post about shipping the MVP of FC 2.0 https://allisonseboldt.com/february-2020-shipped-it/ . Is there a post for the first version ?
You can look at the domain on the internet archive's wayback machine and see the different iterations it's gone through. You should be able to do that for other websites you see as well!
Good idea, I'll do that. Thx Allison !