Rethinking the startup MVP: Building a competitive product
AI summary of the linked articleLinear's co-founder argues that today's MVP should not aim to validate a novel idea quickly and cheaply, but to build a version of an existing product idea that is substantially better than what already competes in a crowded market. The article says the classic Lean Startup MVP, which Eric Ries described in 2011, still fits only rare cases of entirely new categories. It describes how Linear narrowed its initial audience to individual contributors at small startups, starting with issue tracking, and drew early users from a waitlist in small invited groups. It also notes that Linear first ran a pay-if-you-want "Friends of Linear" plan during beta and launched publicly only after about a year of testing user sentiment. |
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4 comments  While these ideas could have been developed further, the articulation of every single one of them leaves a lot to be desired. They're theoretical, and seem to have few roots in reality or actual working experience. Intriguing, but altogether uninspired. I had the same impression - this essay had a lot of potential, but they should've dived deeper into this subject. Re: alternative thinking about MVPs, I like the SLC approach:  IDK; I think the main point here confirms my thesis about building Kiwi News, too. We're out-iterating many competitors, and we've never just built something to "impress" someone like, for example, an investor. So, in that sense, the article delivers. It outlines what you're supposed to do when you stop believing in the "MVP approach:" You need to build a product that sets itself apart by competing in a very small market and iterate upwards from that point onwards. And actually, if you're following many founders, I think often times the "fake it till you make it" attitude of building an MVP is still prevalent in zeitgeist, when actually they should focus on action in the market! i'm not sure what these ideas bring to the table. an mvp is an minium *viable* product. viability means something different for every product. i think people are getting hung up on the idea that a mvp needs to look like crap. linear, as a late entrant to their sector, needed to build much more than a purely functioning product. they needed something better, hence this article i guess. now one that you can learn from this article is that if you're building something like linear (late entrant) you can rely more heavily on prototyping and designs build up a waitlist since people already understand what you're doing. |
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