The Death of the MVP
When Did MVP Start Meaning "Mostly Very Pointless". How a Useful Idea Became a Justification for Bad Products.
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It used to be a good idea… But the Minimum Viable Product was never meant to be a shortcut. It was a way to test ideas, reduce risk, and learn fast.
You start small, build something simple but valuable, put it in front of real users, and watch what happens. Not to impress investors or show progress on a roadmap, but to learn what matters before you build too much.
That was the point. But that’s not what MVP means anymore.
Today, MVP often means something different…
A half-working product. A feature nobody understands. A rushed release that lands in the wild with no real context, no clear value, and no plan for learning.
Just the label: MVP. That’s enough, right? Except it isn’t. It never was.
What began as a method to build better products has become an excuse to ship broken ones.
Somewhere along the way, MVP stopped meaning “let’s learn fast” and started meaning “let’s ship anything.”
So let’s rewind a bit and ask the real question: how did we get here?
The Original Idea Made Sense
Eric Ries popularized the MVP in The Lean Startup.
The idea wasn’t to cut corners. It was to avoid wasting time on ideas that sound smart but don’t work in practice.
Instead of assuming we know what people want, we ask them. Instead of building the full solution first, we test the riskiest assumptions early.
But here’s the important part: An MVP still had to be viable.
It still had to provide some value to someone. Even in a very small way, it had to solve a real problem or help a real user. Otherwise, it wasn’t an MVP. It was just an unfinished idea.
A true MVP also had to teach the team something useful.
Not just opinions. Not just “I like it” or “I don’t get it.” The goal was to create behavior. To see what people do when they use the product. That’s the only kind of feedback worth chasing.
If you release something that confuses people or doesn’t solve anything, they won’t give you insight. They’ll give you silence. And silence isn’t data.
So What Went Wrong?
Part of the answer is behavioral. When teams feel pressure to deliver, they often default to what is visible. Shipping something looks like progress.
Thinking, researching, and waiting to test with real users, those things don’t look as productive.
There’s also action bias. We feel better when we do something, even if it’s not the right thing. MVP became the banner for the movement. Not learning. Just motion.
This is especially common in big companies, where teams are under pressure to meet deadlines, show results, and report outcomes.
In those environments, MVP turns into a buzzword that means “we launched something” instead of “we learned something.” And nobody stops to ask what we actually learned.
Daniel Kahneman described this kind of thinking as fast and intuitive. When we’re stressed or busy, we tend to rely on simple mental shortcuts. Just ship. Just show progress. Just label it MVP and move on.
But fast thinking is not the same as smart thinking. And this is one of those cases where speed creates noise, not knowledge.
When you release a product that doesn’t work well or doesn’t solve a real problem, users don’t give useful feedback. They don’t engage. They get confused. Or they leave. And when they leave, you don’t just lose a test. You lose trust.
People remember when something feels broken or pointless. They hesitate the next time you ask them to try something. The next MVP gets ignored. Your team stops learning. And the cycle continues.
In systems thinking, this is called a reinforcing loop. One broken release reduces trust, which reduces engagement, which makes the next release even harder to learn from. That adds pressure to ship even faster, and quality drops again.
Over time, teams are just throwing things into the market and hoping for the best.
That’s not innovation. That’s guessing with a fancy name.
Let’s Be Clear About What MVP Really Means
An MVP is not a prototype.
It’s not just an early version.
It’s not a slide deck.
It’s not a landing page unless that page gives you real data about behavior.
A real MVP should do three things:
First, it should offer some value. Not all the value. Not the full experience. Just something useful enough that a real user says, “That helped.”
Second, it should create a chance to learn something important. Not vanity feedback, but actual insight. Something that helps you decide what to do next.
Third, it should respect the user’s time. People can tell when something is just a rushed experiment. If you want their attention, you have to earn it.
MVP was never about speed. It was about waste. Reducing waste by learning early. Saving time later by thinking now. Teams that succeed with MVPs don’t just build fast. They ask better questions.
They don’t ask, “Do you like this?” They ask, “Did this help you solve a problem?” They don’t ask, “Would you pay for this?” They ask, “What did you use before this, and how was it different?”
These are the questions that lead to learning. Not opinions. Behavior.
And they test with users who are close to the problem. Not random testers. Not internal people with bias. Actual users with actual needs.
They also keep the scope small but the thinking sharp. A narrow solution. A focused value. A short loop between release and response.
That’s the sweet spot. Not big. Not fancy. But sharp enough to learn.
If you lead a team, your job is not just to ship. It’s to create the conditions for learning.
That means asking your team what they learned from a release, not just what they launched. It means pushing for clarity on value, not just activity. And it means protecting time to think, not just rewarding speed.
Sometimes that means saying no to a rushed launch. Sometimes it means asking harder questions when someone presents an MVP that doesn’t seem viable. And sometimes, it means admitting you don’t know what the right solution is, so you need better signals before you move forward.
Leadership in product is not about always being right.
It’s about making sure your team is asking the right questions.
Let’s Bring MVP Back to What It Was Meant to Be
The idea still works. The term isn’t broken, but how we use it is often. If you’re building something new, ask yourself these three things:
Does this version offer real value to someone?
Will it teach us something important about what works and what doesn’t?
Are we being honest about what we’re testing and why?
If the answer is no, then don’t call it an MVP. Call it what it is… A draft, a prototype, a sketch. That’s fine.
Just don’t pretend you’re testing viability when you’re not.
And if the answer is yes, then protect it.
Build with care.
Deliver clearly.
Watch what people do, not what they say.
Because that’s the whole point of an MVP.
Not just building something. But building the right thing.
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Disclaimer: I’ve collected some of these visuals over the past decade while writing and building slides for myself, never with plans to publish them, just for my studies and reference. Some were saved from sites like Pinterest or Google without proper source information, and I am sorry about that. If one of them is yours, or you know who made it, just message me! I’ll gladly give credit or take it down if needed. They are not my creation. My creations always have my label.