I feel like sometimes people confuse Minimum Viable Product with Minimum Sellable Product. That is, MVP is not about building the smallest thing that someone will pay you money for. It's about cutting out all the pieces that might fall onto the 20 side of the Pareto principle. It's about resolving any 50-50 decisions by picking one way and going with it, instead of quibbling over which way is the best ("Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" sort of thing). It's about making every really difficult design decision answer the question "do we really need this feature? right now?".
If I can take you back, you might remember that the first iPhone didn't have a customizable home screen or a unified inbox. It went with "The Web is Your API" instead of native apps. It didn't even have copy-paste!
That said, if someone handed you an original iPhone, it is still very recognizable as an iPhone. It still took YEARS to iterate internally and reach that first model iPhone. From friends who've worked on the iPhone, I've heard there were something like 5 unreleased precursors to the iPad. That's right, the iPhone was actually the MVP of the iPad.
So, MVP doesn't mean you don't have to work at it. It doesn't mean that it won't take a lot of time to develop internally. At CodeConf, Wil Shipley said to think about it as Minimum Viable Awesome. MVP is about recognizing which decisions are best made by the engineers and product managers, and which are best made by the customers. Your MVP shouldn't be the first thing you can charge money for, it should be the first thing you can charge money for and feel proud about.
Your examples just show that your first sentence is wrong :) Actually, MVP IS about building the smallest thing possible that someone would use - paying for it or just using the process - and it's not about 50-50 decisions.
The idea behind MVP is simple enough: market response is more important and more accurate than anything you can ever do yourself - so the most important thing you can do is get it. The best way to get it is be out there fast, however - in order to get something that's worth something you need to give something meaningful (value) - and the result is the MVP.
MVP doesn't mean you don't have to work at it - it means you have to THINK about it a lot.. and be very connected to your market.
I feel like sometimes people confuse Minimum Viable Product with Minimum Sellable Product. That is, MVP is not about building the smallest thing that someone will pay you money for. It's about cutting out all the pieces that might fall onto the 20 side of the Pareto principle. It's about resolving any 50-50 decisions by picking one way and going with it, instead of quibbling over which way is the best ("Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" sort of thing). It's about making every really difficult design decision answer the question "do we really need this feature? right now?".
If I can take you back, you might remember that the first iPhone didn't have a customizable home screen or a unified inbox. It went with "The Web is Your API" instead of native apps. It didn't even have copy-paste!
That said, if someone handed you an original iPhone, it is still very recognizable as an iPhone. It still took YEARS to iterate internally and reach that first model iPhone. From friends who've worked on the iPhone, I've heard there were something like 5 unreleased precursors to the iPad. That's right, the iPhone was actually the MVP of the iPad.
So, MVP doesn't mean you don't have to work at it. It doesn't mean that it won't take a lot of time to develop internally. At CodeConf, Wil Shipley said to think about it as Minimum Viable Awesome. MVP is about recognizing which decisions are best made by the engineers and product managers, and which are best made by the customers. Your MVP shouldn't be the first thing you can charge money for, it should be the first thing you can charge money for and feel proud about.