Think of an MVP as a series of experiments

indiehackers.com

Series of experiments costing both you (time and/or money) and customers. Potentially also brand perception as unreliable.

Add far as I know no major still existing product was released as minimum viable product.

Customer focus yes, selling prototypes no.

Exactly what the article says.

Dropbox had an MVP at one point. There's even a tech crunch article titled "How DropBox Started As A Minimal Viable Product"

There are endless examples of SAAS or software products that still exist today that were bootstrapped and had public MVPs.

There were definitely not minimum in the commonly understood sense. On the contrary, quite feature rich and designed to be extended instead of being completely thrown away.

(Compare e.g. Dropbox UI between versions. In fact modern version has regressed quite a lot just to get shiny.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com