

ALEX
ISKOLD
T H O U G H T S O N T E C H S TA RT U P S
A N D V E N T U R E C A P I TA L

Your MVP is
minimal, but
is it viable?
P O S T E D 1 0 / 0 7 / 2 0 1 5 11 C O M M E N T S

In this day and age, when startups talk about MVP

the emphasis is always on minimum.

Everyone encourages founders to not wait too long

to launch, to get it out there, to get feedback, and to
start learning from the market.

That is great advice in general, and I am personally

a big fan of going fast vs going slow. Yet, to me
there is a subtlety that is lost in the message, which
leads to misinterpretation and bad outcomes.

 The minimum product that comes out

still needs to be viable.
If a product is too simple, and falls below the bar, it
won’t be well received, and won’t be likely to take
off. If the product is too simple, doesn’t solve the
problem, and doesn’t activate and retain the
customers, it is not an MVP. It may be a prototype,
and there lies the difference.

 MVP is good enough, and can be

improved to be great one day.
Prototype isn’t good enough.

Simple, but not simpler than

it needs to be
Einstein said that everything should be made as
simple as possible, but not simpler. He implied that
difficult problems are just that – difficult, and
ultimately, some things can’t be simplified.
  A great MVP isn’t only simple, it is
also sufficient.

It embodies the solution to the problem, or an

elegant approximation to a solution that is good
enough. Sure, it lacks features. Sure, it is raw and
unpolished, but good MVP can be recognized as
having the potential to be great – to fully solve the
problem.

Viable literally means alive

If you look up
the word
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/viability)
viability in the dictionary you will see that it comes
from the Latin word vita, meaning life.

 Being viable literally means being

alive.
How can a product be alive?

Products that we fall in love with have a vital quality

to them. They feel great, respond right – they
delight us with their UX, simplicity, and the way they
solve the problem.

They feel different, they feel alive.

A branch of science called Complexity

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems) studies
patterns across disciplines, and seeks to
understand the dynamic of different systems.

Roughly speaking, Complexity distinguishes

between systems that are in the state of chaos,
dead and alive. Systems that are considered alive
are close to the edge of chaos. They have enough
interesting dynamic built in, but they aren’t out of
control.

The analog for MVP is that you can have a product

that has too many features – it’s chaotic and hard to
understand. On the other extreme, you can have a
product that just doesn’t have enough built in. It is
not good enough, it is not alive.

It is in the middle that you find your great MVP. It is

minimal and vital. And key to vitality are feedback
loops.

How to think about your

MVP
It turns out that the key to vitality is feedback loops.
This is what makes natural systems alive and this is
what makes great software alive as well.

 Strive to create a minimal product

that has correct feedback loops.
Step 0: Talk to customers and confirm verbally that
you are on to something.
Do the unscalable things to validate the market.

Step 1: Map out MVP based on your gut and

understanding of the market.

Repeat steps 2-4 until done:

Step 2: Remove features that feel unnecessary.

Step 3: Combine features that can be combined,

simplify.

Step 4: Check the flows and feedback loops. Are

you solving the problem you set to solve? Is the
system dynamic enough? Will it be alive?

What you are doing is you are focusing on a

minimal set of features, but not at the expense of
viability. Sometimes after removing a bunch of
things you may need to add some things back.
Viability for different types of
businesses
How exactly to make your MVP viable is as much
art as it is science. But there is science to it, for
sure. Let’s take a look at different types of
businesses to get the idea of what to look for.

Consumer utility/social: For consumer product

activation and retention are two important feedback
loops. The product is not immediately viable if users
aren’t activated. Similarly, the product won’t be
viable in the future if the users aren’t retained.

Activation for most consumer products is one or

more actions that the user has to perform to
become engaged and have potential to be retained.
For example, on Twitter, an activated user may be
expected to follow at least 10 other users and post
a Tweet. To become retained, the user is expected
to come back at least once a month and read a
tweet.
Marketplaces: For marketplace the key thing is to
enable liquidity. For example, for Airbnb, it wouldn’t
be enough to just list the apartments or express a
need for a rental. Both need to be in place. There
needs to be a mechanism to match buyers and
sellers. Most often it is done via Search and
Discovery, but in different types of marketplaces
matching can be done differently.

Again there needs to be the basic feedback loop

around activation, and ultimately each successful
seller and buyer need to experience the joy of the
first transaction. What happens next is equally
important for viability. Could Airbnb work if you
removed seller and buyer ratings? Perhaps not.
Maybe this feedback loop is critical to make sure
that the marketplace can self-organize and weed
out bad players. Including or not including ratings
into the MVP is a critical decision.

E-commerce: For e-commerce business, the ability

to find and buy products is critical. Purchase is the
feedback loop. But a bunch of other things need to
work correctly. For example, imagine an e-
commerce site without the search capability. It might
be fine if you have a handful of products, but not if
you have a large catalog. Should search be part of
your MVP?

For retention, you need to decide what will make the

users come back. Is it promotions? Is it
personalization? Perhaps subscription? Maybe a
mix of all of it? What is the minimum investment you
make in MVP that maximizes the chance of users
sticking with you and coming back for more?

SaaS: For SaaS business, activation is signup and

retention is non-churn. The first one relies on
building features that are needed, and the second
relies on repeat usage. The second feedback loop
is a lot harder to get right in MVP, but it’s pretty
important.

Unlike consumer businesses that don’t charge,

SaaS products are paid. The fact that you are
paying for something is already an incentive to use
it, but it is not a guarantee.
For more details on building your MVP go read this
awesome guide
(http://blog.fastmonkeys.com/2014/06/18/minimum-viable-
product-your-ultimate-guide-to-mvp-great-examples/).
Below is the image from the post.

Compute your MVP

There is a method to great MVP. It captures and
brings to life the minimum, yet sufficient version of
your solution to a business problem.

 Don’t rely on luck or minimalism to

get you to YOUR MVP. Compute it.

MVP is a product computation on a napkin or a

whiteboard. MVP is not about furiously typing code.
Rather, a great MVP is about rigorously thinking.
We can’t predict the future, but we can do better
than roll the dice.

We can be intelligent about our MVPs, make them

simple, build in feedback loops, and make sure they
have a shot at being alive.

Please share your MVP experiences here. What

worked / didn’t work for you in your business?
 11 Comments ›
Alex, definitely inspiring in its explanation
and spot on with my experience. Two
mistakes I made in my past was not
building a finished “enough” core product
(step 0-4). When you then subsequently
start building platform features around the
basically non viable core product (mostly
by not listening to feedback from early
tests), it creates the state of chaos you
describe.

Another problem that many lean/agile

organizations fail from is to create a final
product from a list of features by following
an agile approach. I was very inspired by
“User Story Mapping” of Jeff Patton that
puts a roadmap on top of the backlog of
features that lead to a product that has a
lot of features but no meaning.

I had to smile at your example of

ecommerce and the necessity of search.
In our case of ZeroLight we are
redesigning the car configurator of the
future by allowing full 3d exploration and
configuration as a core product. This
however needs a rethink of explore and
find and purchase together with our
partners that can be compared to the
change of going from a list site (like
Yahoo originally was) towards Google
(based on user input). Only then can we
come to a final MVP beyond replacing the
old.

 (https://alexiskold.net/2015/10/07/re-thinking-
viability-of-your-mvp/?
like_comment=25113&_wpnonce=c9e03751fe)
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Glad you liked the post Barry, and

thank you for sharing you experience.

 (https://alexiskold.net/2015/10/07/re-thinking-
viability-of-your-mvp/?
like_comment=25114&_wpnonce=49bb40bb1d)
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@Alex, nice post. Perhaps have a look at

Templeton Compression and Sequoia’s
model of the Sales Ready Product (SRP),
which they position as a contextually
viable alternative to the MVP. It’s bare-
bones but interesting.
https://www.inkling.com/sequoia/
(https://www.inkling.com/sequoia/)

 (https://alexiskold.net/2015/10/07/re-thinking-
viability-of-your-mvp/?
like_comment=25116&_wpnonce=9f13e7390f)
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Great point Peter. I think there is a

refinement in that customer viability
isn’t the same as sales/revenue
viability.

 (https://alexiskold.net/2015/10/07/re-thinking-
viability-of-your-mvp/?
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A Very Solid Post, Alex. John B. Petersen
III’s answer at Quora http://qr.ae/R4pog1
(http://qr.ae/R4pog1) brought be here and I’m
glad it did. I’m in the early Stage phase of
my Web Startup (Pre Launch Splash
Page about to go live) and at STEP 1
now. This post on MVP solidified all my
assumptions and strategies.

Thank You and Very well done! Shared

already!

 (https://alexiskold.net/2015/10/07/re-thinking-
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