This Is Why the Detractors Hate Your Minimum Viable Product
Before you test the market, let’s make sure your product isn’t “impracticable”
Last month, I wrote a piece about Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development and why the haters hate it.
TL;DR: As an entrepreneur and a product leader, I bring new products and features to market at a pretty solid clip, including a massive one about ten minutes before I sat down to write this. I almost always launch these new products after testing their market viability with an MVP.
The main argument I hear against MVP development is that it hurts the software ecosystem by allowing flawed product to go to market at an ever increasing rate.
Here’s the problem I have with that criticism:
MVP isn’t about the needs of the existing market
There’s a misconception that those of us who develop and release MVPs are bringing a known quantity to a known market. That isn’t the case at all. If we were doing that, we’d be internal IT engineers, not entrepreneurs.
A true entrepreneur is attempting to bring innovation to market, not a commodity. And when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before, you’re not so much finding a…
