MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.

The simplest way to explain this is that it is the most basic version of the product you’re imagining. It’s not the final product; it’s not the polished version and neither it is the version with every feature you’ve already thought of added.

It’s simply a version that works well enough for people to try, test and give feedback on. The goal of building an MVP is to learn from the problem you’re trying to solve through the product you’re trying to build and from the customers you’re want to serve.

I’ve seen many founders approach MVP’s as if they’re preparing for a grand launch. In reality, the MVP exists to answer a simple question: are we solving a real problem in a way that people care about?

One pattern I’ve noticed repeatedly is that founders try to add as many features as the possible can before they’ve even validated the core idea. I’m not sure if they’re trying to impress the potential customers or investors. What starts as a simple product slowly becomes something much bigger.

Instead of taking the MVP to the potential customers, founders add a new feature, then another and then another. Eventually months pass and the product is still not ready to be sold to customers. I personally don’t consider this as progress. To be it’s just delaying the moment of truth.

I’ll give you an example of a founder I mean 2 years ago who has been build an ebike – a different kind and till date he is still building it. Instead of getting it into the hands of potential users, letting them try and test – he’s refining it, adding new technologies and trying to make it better.

But my question is, “what is the point of investing your time, money and resources into something that you don’t even know if anyone would want it?”

My genuine advice to such founders is: stop adding features and let people try it. Take it to market. Let people experience it. Start creating content around it and build an audience around the journey. Because the feedback you’ll receive from real users is worth far more than another 6 months or a year of just unnecessary improvements.

The biggest benefit I can think of building an MVP is clarity.

An MVP helps you as a founder test whether people are genuinely interested in what they’re building before investing heavily in it. It helps identify flaws in the product and process much earlier. It reveals opportunities that may not seem obvious before or missed. More importantly, it saves time, money and energy that might otherwise be spend building features nobody wants.

This is one of the reasons startup ideas that solve real problems matter so much. Even a strong idea benefits from real-world validation before what you as a founder imagine and what customers experience are often very different things.

An MVP closes that gap.

The purpose of an MVP is a good way to prove whether your idea is right or wrong. It’s really about taking just a small enough risk to understand whether your product is genuinely solving the problem and do people really want it.

That’s why MVP’s matter as they help you learn faster and build better than your assumptions will. And out of the many mistakes that quietly kill startups happen when founder spend too much time perfecting products and not enough time understanding customers.