I used to constantly fall prey to this — especially when working on projects in college — where talking to consumers in depth or deep rooted industry knowledge identifying a real gap was present. So I’d build products/tools that I thought were “cooool” and “useful”.

Send it out after so many hours of iteration. Product is done. You’re on a high… the random people you sent it out to stop coming to the sites. There are no users and the website is a ghost town.

It was a bloated MVP!

So below are my lessons:

• rephrase the word Minimum Viable Product with Minimum Viable “Thing”
  • what’s the thing that solves the solution - value
  • i believe the commoditization of engineering or product building has left the ability to build insanely “cool” looking tools, without the necessity of the product existing — thus “bloated mvp”
  • “is anyone getting anyyy value out of it? or do you have 0 users?”
• think of your #1 most compelling value prop story for your MVP
  • tell the story with as much specific context as possible
• generate specific value to 1–10 specific people you know, consistent with your specific value prop story earlier
  • the logo/ux can come in later

  • the aim of an mvp should be how can i get the first user and give them enough value to convince myself of the product i want to build

    

• coding the saying into an algorithm use a greedy search algorithm of giving value to someone. where maximum value can be generated is where entry should be done for even slight doubling down of features → further sales → a product → money etc…
• what’s the most manual way i can give value to a person, then when it’s actual value, i can scale it to a product
  • be a manual value consultant in your area — until you can’t scale it anymore because of need → then go on building the mvp

if all this is true, why are we then still building bloated mvps?

• Value Prop Blindness: You don’t really understand what problem you’re solving, and you don’t realize how important it is to pass this sanity check before building anything
• Cargo Culting: You want to build up your self-image as a “founder”, and you have a mental image of founders building products, so you set out to build a product
• Social Permissivity: The startup community hasn’t yet picked up on the idea that a Minimum Viable Product typically shouldn’t be an actual product, so you get to plow ahead in the wrong direction without feeling socially pressured by your startup-peers to course correct until it’s too late
• Sense of Control: Working on product design and engineering makes you feel (wrongly) like you know what you’re doing and you’re making tangible progress
• Fun: Product design is fun. Engineering is also fun.