Most people would read that abbreviation as 'Minimum Viable Product' in the HN context.
Not me, I totally understood what he meant due to the context. The reality is that "Minimum Viable Product" was hijacked from the MVP of sports.
I'm not into sports (unless I'm doing something myself :) ), so I never heard it used like that before.
Its a pretty common Americanism that is disconnected from sports in my experience, I suspect the average American would recognize it as "something/someone that is contributing a lot", and only a tiny percentage would even recognize "minimum viable product" spelled out.
Or outside the US - "MVP" seems to come from US sports terminology which are still relatively niche in the rest of the world (compared to Football anyway, and I reckon there's a large amount of people who don't even care about sports)
Heh, there's a painting company that parks their van along Kezar Drive in SF with the name/logo "MVP", which they intend to be read as Most Valuable Painter. It always makes me think of the scene in an old episode of Mr Bean where he paints a room by putting a firecracker in a paint can.