Building Products That Matter: Beyond the MVP

The tech industry loves to talk about MVPs — Minimum Viable Products. But in our rush to ship quickly, we’ve quietly redefined “viable” to mean “shippable,” and forgotten the part that matters most: does it actually solve the problem?

The Minimum Viable Bar

“Viable” should mean a product that genuinely works well enough that a real customer would choose it over doing nothing. Not a prototype they’ll tolerate in a user test. Not something an early adopter will forgive because they believe in the vision. Something that earns its place in someone’s workflow.

What Gets Missed

The pressure to move fast creates systematic blind spots:

• Onboarding: The first 10 minutes determine whether someone becomes a user or a churn statistic. Most MVPs treat it as an afterthought.
• Error states: What happens when the happy path breaks? Often nothing useful.
• Performance: Slow products signal low quality and drive abandonment — even if the core feature is solid.

The Reframe I Find Useful

Instead of asking “what’s the minimum we can ship?” ask “what’s the minimum that would make someone tell a colleague about this?” That’s a higher bar, but it’s the right one.