What is MVP?

The MVP concept was popularized by Eric Ries in "The Lean Startup." The core insight is that most product assumptions are unvalidated — you don't actually know if customers want what you're building until you put something real in front of them. Building a full product before testing those assumptions risks spending months and significant money on something the market doesn't want. An MVP shortens that feedback loop dramatically.

A key misunderstanding: MVP does not mean a buggy, unfinished product. It means a focused product that does one thing well — the thing that represents your core hypothesis about what customers need. Dropbox's MVP was a demo video, not working software. Airbnb's MVP was a simple website and a few listings in San Francisco, not a global platform. The minimum refers to feature scope, not quality.

After launching an MVP, the critical work is systematically gathering and interpreting user feedback — not just "do you like it?" but observing behavior, measuring retention, understanding what users actually do vs. what they say they'll do. This data informs whether to pivot (change the core approach based on what was learned) or persevere (double down on the current direction) — the central decision loop of lean product development.