How good should your MVP be?

I think if you are trying to own a new market you create, your MVP can be buggy as long as it's functional, but if you are trying to compete in an already well established market, then the product needs to be stable and more polished. No one's going to give you their attention if there are quality substitutes.

The quality of an MVP should be sufficient to effectively test the core concept and gather valuable feedback from potential customers. It should not be overly polished or feature-rich, as the primary goal is to gather feedback and make iterations based on that feedback.

To me, just prove out that people want your solution and are willing to pay for it.
If they are SUPER motivated, the ugly MVP won't stop them.

There are two popular points of view:

• famous "if you are not ashamed of shipping, you are shipping too late", i.e. MVP focused on the "M" part
• not so famous "ship just the minimal feature, but actually working", i.e. MVP, focused on the "V" part

There are plenty of people who ship buggy-ugly products, do it again and again, like it and it works fine for them. This approach often helps to ship faster and why to fix bugs without confirming product-market fit first? - Maybe the whole product idea is wrong and buggy release helps you to adjust or get to the next product sooner.

IMHO, most of indie hackers have luxury of choosing the style that fits your own preferences and the ways of working. To my understanding there is a lot of successful products started as "V" MVP - with well working really minimal functionality, so it's definitely an option.

Hi, I think i should have better defined what is a « must have » and what is a « nice to have ». I know i should have, but still, I was afraid my MVP wouldn’t look professional enough, and I think I've added a lot of unnecessary features.
Do not hesitate to have a look and give me a feedback about it (guruscorner.co, which allows to create betting challenges without real money) and better, promote your MVP there !

For me, MVP means a product that is minimal, but all the features it does contain are polished and they are easy and enjoyable to use. The opposite would be something that has a dozen features but the features barely work and their UI/UX is terrible.

To answer the question: MVP should be good and finished, but it's an MVP, because it doesn't yet contain all the features the final product will.

A good MVP, or minimum viable product, has the following qualities:

• It has just enough features to be usable by early customers.
• It allows the product's core assumptions to be tested and gathers feedback from real users.
• It provides a meaningful experience for early users.
• It has a simplified user interface and limited functionality.
• It focuses on a specific target market.
• It prioritizes simplicity and usability over perfection.
• It allows the product's core assumptions to be validated quickly and cheaply.

I think your MVP should be the minimal product which accomplishes to capture the main functionality you want to provide, even if it is not perfectly functional. It should help you evaluate if there exists interest in the market. Therefore, I would generally avoid any functionality that falls outside this scope, including cosmetic features, user interface design or any extra features along those lines. I think generally there should be huge room for improvement after the MVP, so I don't agree so much on that 30%. I see it more like 1%.

MVP should work but bugs are expected. My goal for mvp is conveying the message and value prop of your product. It should represent some of the product core values to see if you’re heading in the right direction to meet user and market needs.

Launching your MVP is a critical step towards building a successful startup. An MVP can provide valuable information about your target audience and validate whether or not they want your solution. The key thing to remember is that an MVP does not need to include every feature of your final product. In fact, some startups have found success by focusing on only three core features.
An effective MVP requires careful consideration of customer demand and the value proposition of your service. By identifying these two things, you'll be able to determine your minimum viable product.
You can also check out my blog: https://blog.saasmantra.com/saas-minimum-viable-product-mvp/

It depends on the launch type (beta, closed, public) and the market you are pursuing (well or under served). The basic rule of thumb is that is it should provide the user with the value he is looking for (somewhat) better than the existing alternatives. For some markets this could be just an excel sheet for others it needs to be a fully blown web or mobile app.

I believe the MVP needs to be great in user experience but as an MVP do not need too many functionalities so you can learn which ones come next.

Hi,
Wood here,
I have same question how good should your MVP be? if you get correct answer in comments plz mention me on https://purolatortracking.com/purolator-alberta-branches/#more-203.
Thanks.

It should be as good as delivering first value to your customers. Your early MVP could even be a newsletter.

You should be able to build a first website within 3 hours and plug in some useful tools like bannernote.com

I wrote my thoughts here, but generally you should be doing the bare minimum to evaluate whether the core value you aim to deliver is actually what your target market wants.

Ugly is okay.

Skimpy on features is okay.

Buggy is not okay.

I think there needs to be a balance between quantity and quality, maybe I only do 10% of the features, but they provide value to the customer and are of high quality.

You're just trying to validate the market, so functionality in general is good. The beautifying and UI can come later.