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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only who loathe the current trend of posting things before they are finished?

I am all for the lean approach, but this isn't a minimum viable product (that would be a player and a tagging system to find the language I was interested in) it is a website.

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I don't typically mind too much, but this post is misleading. The headline specifically made this sound like it was a working project, not just a photoshopped screenshot.

Bait-and-switch is just as bad a form of linkbait as any other.

It's frustrating that we can't use the product yet, but I'm sure that people's reaction here will go a long way in helping them gauge interest.

Though this is reasonable, I wonder if it's measuring the right thing. Since money isn't involved (as far as I know), people could be entering their email just out of curiosity. It's easy to provide an email for a notification of completion, after which, make a decision to continue with participation or move on entirely.

You get the emails so you can do "Customer Development". You email them back and schedule an interview to learn more about your customers.

It isn't something where you say yes/no based on the number of signups.

So that's what it's been called. Lately I've been having people trying to schedule interviews with me about their service.

It's so incredibly annoying, because it wastes my time, and I get to learn that they are considering charging way way way more than I'd ever want to spent, so I stop using them regardless.

It's like a lose/lose scenario. I get the impression their pitching out different money numbers to try and see response, but when you say something clearly off the wall, I just stop using your service.

I don't want there to be some possibility a month or two down the road that you're going to try and up the price to one of those insane ones you asked me about.

So far for me, "Customer Development" is the single largest turnoff for any application.

Testing pricing isn't usually a big part of interviews unless you are addressing an enterprise market. Also, Customer Development is larger in scope than pricing or interviews:

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-custome...

Thanks for the link to the article. I think that certain people have the time, or are willing to do this for a startup. There's nothing wrong with that.

But I think it's important to not think of it like a sales pitch.

I am getting "Customer Development" calls as if they are a sales pitch. As if it's okay to sort of bully me into trying to respond to the questions, like a sales person refuses to accept no.

This is incredible annoying, and it's good to see where the (good) intentions of this thing come from.

http://giffconstable.com/2011/07/12-tips-for-customer-develo...

"make sure that you're learning, not selling!"

i think the purpose of these types of "launch pages" is to gauge interest... to see if there's really enough interest to spend the time and effort creating the working system. it's also a great way to create a list of potential beta users. when something is ready, the person running the site can hand out beta codes to people that have signed up, and get real feedback at that point

If it was common on other sites I would be a little annoyed but I think HN is the perfect place for a technique like this since most readers are happy to discuss projects in the idea phase. I for one like having the opportunity to throw in my thoughts at an early stage.

I am relatively new to HN so I've just come to accept it, I would prefer that products were finished, but it's not too big of a deal. Plus, it might give the creators feedback suggesting they shouldn't pursue a project or maybe even that they should invest more time and resources in a project. Either way, we would all benefit from creators being more strategic in their projects.

If the market is not there, then I would hope smart people would spend their time doing something else.

Unfortunately MVP is one of those terms like "pivot" that got out of control. An MVP is "the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-...

This is a great example of an MVP. If nobody signs up, he knows there is no demand for this product.

This is a great example of a launch page, not an MVP. It's not 'a version of a new product', it's marketing information about a proposed product.

One reason it's a good example of a launch page is that it tells you before you enter your address that the product isn't available yet. Many launch pages these days talk about the non-existent product, ask for your address, and only then tell you the product isn't available. They try to start a business by lying to their prospective customers. I'm glad to see that this one shows integrity by telling the truth about availability.

You don't seem to understand that the 'product' part of MVP requires an actual working product... not a landing page.

Wow. Posting the textbook definition of MVP gets downvoted. The Redditization of Hacker News.

This is not "a version of a new product," it is a screenshot of a version of a new product and a call to action. There is no product to evaluate minimally. Since you like definitions:

viable: Capable of working successfully; feasible: "the proposed investment was economically viable".

A minimum viable product is a product that's capable of working successfully; in this case it's one that potential customers can interact with successfully. This is not a product. This is a "coming soon" page.

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