What is an MVP in 2024?

Made famous by the early 2000s Lean Startup movement, the MVP is now something most entrepreneurs recognize. But, It has changed quite a bit since it was made famous by Eric Ries. The simple idea is, build a product that in many ways is imperfect, so that you can get it in the hands of your users fast and see how they interact with it. Then, you improve with the feedback you get. Unfortunately, it has been really blown way out of proportion and the simple idea of the MVP has lost its significance. The minimum viable product is supposed to mean the smallest amount of product you can give your users that give them value, but many are now using it as the minimum amount of product they can ship, period. This has implications. And those are that many forget to make sure that their product actually give value to their users, and thus, they don’t actually get users, or if they do, they churn quickly.

In 2024, the standard for what gives value to users has changed quite a bit. Users are now used to products having great design and UX, they are used to products that are actually working, and they are used to seeing desired results quickly. With that in mind, the way we think about MVP has to change. The first product we launch to the market has to meet the expected standard of users. This obviously can take many forms, but if you are not innovating in some enormous way, your product has to be better than what they are using today to resolve their problem. It either has to be easier to use, produce results faster, or be cheaper. The latter is generally a difficult road to take because it has to be significantly cheaper, which many times has implications on the business model.

Yesterday I was presented a product that I thought was pretty impressive. The product was pretty complete in terms of what you would expect as a customer, and, it was significantly cheaper than other options in the market. To me it was a no-brainer to sign up and try it out. The founder explained that yes, they have competition, but, they found a way to reduce prices significantly because they were innovating in a “back-office” area of their business that made it really cheap for them to provide the product at the new price-point while still making money. Great. This is what it takes. I told him: this is a great MVP, you have nailed it and I wish you all the best. And in retrospect, I should thank him for inspiring me to write this post.

Good luck with your MVP