Re:I Am Eric Ries, Author of the Lean Startup. AMA
by eries on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @01:21PM
(#9375800)
People have the ability to willfully misunderstand any concept, no matter what it's called. That said, if MLP is a better term, I'd gladly adopt it. Go prove it.
I'm a big fan if the concept of the MVP, however, having build 30+ apps and spoken with hundreds of founders how to buils their product, I have seen a lot of people struggling with the terminology of the MvP.
From the top of my head, 40% of founders are confused by the viable in the MVP. Furthermore, every time I explain the MVP, I catch myself having to explain that the MVP doesn't mean a crappy product, viable means having very few features, but having those few few features work really well.
Now that the term MVP has been out for 8 years, and so many people still build crappy products, despite all the knowledge around it, is it maybe not the right terminology?
I've thought a lot about this, and from what I've seen, building an MVP means building a product that is very, very basic, but that users would love, because this product can test a hypothesis. What do you think of the term Minimum Lovable Product, because from my point of view, this terminology encompasses everything that the MVP tries to define, without the bad stuff or the confusion.
Hope that all made sense, thanks a lot.