The first people using your product are an amazing breed

I would add that one must also facilitate feedback - which I think is separate from (and has a separate response rate from) sending out a "what did you think?" type email. Plus, if you wait to contact me, I may have forgotten the details of what I discovered. I emphasize to all my project teams: you are only a "new user" once. That time is magic, so pay attention and stick your hand up if something smells funny to you.

Further toward that facilitating feedback point, I may be a visionary, but I don't want to spent 15 minutes creating a Bugzilla account and trolling through whatever gawdawful bug submission process your project has. I will send an email to feedback@example.com, I will for sure use a "submit feedback" button from within the app or webpage[1], I will use a "contact us" form on your website, and I might send a tweet if that's the option of last resort.

I said all of that to say I wholeheartedly agree with the article's premise, but please ensure that you have greased as many of the paths of information ingress as you reasonably can.

1 = With the assumption that such an action will carry with it contextual information: where I was, what browser, maybe some session information - basically the same reason anyone uses the "send report" button from a dead Android app

Good points.

I've seen people tune their apps for these early adopters, talking about how they've got their "viral coefficients" at the correct rate (via product improvements, design, marketing efforts, etc).

Then, by induction, they think the same metrics will hold true once they launch to the general public.

Then they launch and are surprised to find that the numbers don't apply to later categories of users.

I'd be curious if there's a model to solve for that problem.

For MVPs, I have seen this particular situation (it's a B2B scenario). Your customer will use the product with their customers or users. So the MVP has to be 'good enough' for not just your early adopter customers, but for their customers as well.

Challenge then is that their customers/users may not be the same early adopter types. A work-in-progress app may reflect poorly on your customer.

MVP has a lowest common denominator aspect in this case. As in, what would be acceptable to your customer's customers/users? Seems to raise the bar on what is needed for a minimum viable product.

The first people are amazing if you are solving a problem point that they've been 'suffering.' That's a good signal to have. :)

A marketing university student told me this a few years ago. Post something interesting or stop posting. If you're running a business, educate yourself on all the aspects of how they work. If you're already running a business and this is news to you, find a day job.

Nice article. It's just what I needed to read today :)