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Comment by emelski | Hacker News Reader

You can use the MVP concept, even on a very mature product. You just have to adjust the scope of the idea. For example, my product has been in development for more than 10 years and has had 24 major releases. Yet when we are considering adding a new feature, we still scope the work in terms of the minimum usable version of the feature, as well as the "100% version", hopefully with a few reasonable steps in between. This enables us to focus on getting something useful out quickly, in order to validate the feature, while avoiding gold plating until we have that validation.

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I hope anyone who is building a startup never listens to your advice.

Putting the minimum effort in and building effectively mediocre features is not how you build customer loyalty and excitement in the market place. And it makes it very easy for competitors to go after you. Sure you should keep the scope tight but you should try and at least make it highly usable. Even if its just so you can sleep at night knowing you made something great.

I hear what you are saying: make quality, complete products.

However, a minimum viable product basically means 'ship something and iterate towards complete.

Considering how many products I have worked on that no one ultimately wanted, you need to prove there is a need for your product BEFORE spending man-years on it.

Even if you understand the problem, putting a simple solution in front of your clients will teach you a lot.

Then two years later, you might be approaching something complete, but with confidence that there really is a market.

It's not about putting in the minimum effort. It's about getting something usable out quickly and gathering feedback from actual users not only to validate the idea, but to ensure that the next steps we take are in the right direction. There's nothing to be gained by building in a vacuum, or polishing a product or feature for months or years, only to find out at last that you built the wrong thing, or that somebody else beat you to the market with something that was "good enough" while you finished your magnum opus.

There's an exception (or five) for every rule; I think startups should be distrustful of one-size-fits-all business models. It's all about defining and managing your customer relationships.

Of course, one noteworthy truth is that Panic had/has existing income streams that allow them to take their sweet time pursuing perfection. The majority of startups have a fixed quantity of runway, making MVP the better choice by default.

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