What is a Minimum Viable Product?

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. The product should have enough functionality to collect customer feedback. The concept can be used to validate a market need for a product and for incremental developments of an existing product. 


Often companies end up creating products or features that they later found out no one needed. See also “The most common reasons for startups to fail and what you can do differently”. When developing a new product or service it is a good idea to start small and validate the idea with customers improve and build on top. Even if you are working for big tech companies this way of working can significantly increase the success of the product you are developing. This strategy targets avoiding building products that customers do not want and seek to better understand the customer with the least money spent. The technique falls under the Lean Startup methodology as MVPs aim to test business hypotheses and validated learning is one of the five principles of the Lean Startup method.

At the beginning airbnb had no money to build a business, the founders of Airbnb used their own apartment to validate their idea to create a short-term online rental housing service. They created a minimalist website, published photos and other details about their property, and found several paying guests almost immediately.

The idea behind an MVP is to reduce costs to a minimum. In some cases you can build it with a bit of time and some effort by using off the shelf tools without any budget. In other cases you will need to hire a company or a freelancer to help you out. We have helped many companies with building prototypes or MVPs of digital products.