Sure, I made clear they were just signing up for the mailing list, not the product itself. They're not paying customers but they're an audience I can sell to later. I expect only 10 percent will convert to the paid product, but that's better than 0%, when you have no audience.

Got it, and that sounds perfectly reasonable. I'd describe it entirely differently from an MVP, but it is reasonable to make a demo to judge reactions and see where points of confusion are in how the product will work.

As well, there are two large categories of MVPs, low fidelity and high fidelity (https://www.robotmascot.co.uk/18-types-of-minimum-viable-pro...), and subtypes within that.

What I did was a "fake door" MVP, as the article states. It is not necessarily intended for directly measuring sales but whether its worth my time to build it in the first place. Having over a thousand sign-ups now, it validates that I should indeed spend my time on it.

Then, I would make a high fidelity one, a "one feature" MVP as the article calls it, which would cut the product down to its essence and see if it can still solve a specific problem, and whether people would still pay for only one feature. I am doing this now with a mobile app instead of web/desktop app as the reduced screen space forces me to think about the problem of time block productivity from its essence.

Perhaps your definitions of MVP are different than others, which is perfectly fine. There are others I've seen over the years like simple, lovable, complete (products), and so on (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955085).

Yeah, I think we are arguing semantics. For me, not being an entrepreneur, the "viable product" portion of MVP seems like it is a useful distinction. In your original post, when you said that you had an MVP that just consisted of a video, I interpreted it as a form of fraud. (i.e. "I sold customers a product that doesn't exist, using a video to fool them.")

This terminology fuzziness is a direct result of SEO. "MVP" = Good Thing in entrepreneurial circles, so things that are not viable products are labeled as such because they want to be associated with that keyword.

100%. satvikpendem is doing wordplay. A video of a nonexistent piece of software is a useful tool, but a viable product it is not.

That he's denying this proves your point.

I don't think so. Look at the other comments replying to my thread. The definition of MVP can mean finding the fastest way to validate with the least effort, as Eric Ries is quoted in the other comment. Perhaps at one point MVP did literally mean the smallest usable product but now the product does not necessarily need to be usable, it just has to validate a hypothesis.

Edit: Agree to disagree.

/shrug

> And a WIP can mean something I haven't even started on yet. /s

> You're twisting the meaning of the words in the acronym. I really don't care, but it renders the words meaningless to use them that way.

Again, I'm not sure how to explain that MVP does not literally mean an actual product. It's a tool for hypothesis testing, you don't spend time and energy building out your entire product before you show something to customers, that would be a waste of time and energy. That's why I, and others, define MVP as anything that let's you understand something new about your market and eventually you use that knowledge to make a product.

Should words have shared meanings? Otherwise communication collapses. You promoted a mock-up and got interest to motivate building a product. That's great. Why use misleading words to describe it?

As I've stated in my other comments, the words I used such as MVP are not misleading, or at least, they have multiple meanings, such that those who understand what I meant by MVP were not confused as to its multiple meanings, so the communication was clear enough.

I've had the same argument but the origins don't support this as far as I can tell. A landing page can be a MVP. Dropbox is I think the classic example.

It feels wrong to me, but I think it puts me on the same side as those that reply "but there's a server still" on serverless discussions. As much as I may dislike the naming, that's what it means.

An MVP has to be able to satisfy some user demand with a feature. A signup can’t do this (but it can facilitate market validation, which you may be thinking of.)

Here’s the definition of an MVP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

Read that Wikipedia page with a different mindset and look up the origins of Dropbox.

> , the term MVP is commonly used, either deliberately or unwittingly, to refer to a much broader notion ranging from a rather prototype-like product to a fully-fledged and marketable product.[9]

I remember the origins of Dropbox! Are you maybe thinking that anything that becomes a successful product must be considered an MVP?

The summary section of that article and the elaboration is correct and the portion you pulled out is just an explanation of a non-normative minority practice. The same goes for the other end that reserves the term for an essentially mature product, although for different reasons, since the minimum to actually put features in the hands of paying users can be debated whereas users cannot use a lack of features.

> I remember the origins of Dropbox! Are you maybe thinking that anything that becomes a successful product must be considered an MVP?

No, that their initial landing page and video is regularly talked about as an MVP. Here's a 2011 article on it: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-pro...

And here's Eric Ries http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-...

> First, a definition: 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.

> Some caveats right off the bat. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products

Eric Ries redefined words to build his brand, which is based around the idea that marketing matters and products don't.