a good MVP is a scrappy MVP

In the startup world, you generally see two patterns:

1. waiting months years before launching a product, waiting it to be perfect

2. releasing as soon as possible to get feedback, fix, and iterate

I strongly believe the second path is the best: ship early, iterate, and get feedback. Releasing a product early gives you a lot of information about your product and how people use it. If you wait to have the product you think is the best, you waste weeks or months of potential feedback. What you think is best is probably not what the market believe is best. And unless you release a product and get feedback, you have no idea if your product is something people actually want.

Waiting to release the “perfect product” is a way to avoid confronting the fact that your idea or product sucks and nobody wants it. By releasing early, you force yourself to look at yourself in the mirror and change the product to get traction. The earliest you do it, the better.

Your first product does not need to be perfect. It should be good enough to show the direction you are taking, what is your vision and get customer feedback.

Take Tesla. The whole idea of an electric car was inspired by the tzero, a car that looks like a toy but showed that electric cars were a real thing. Tesla did not focus on controlling the entire supply chain, they focused on the electrification of the car. Tesla first car, the Tesla Roadster, was based on a Lotus chassis and Tesla added a battery to an existing car.

The tzero, a car that looks like a toy but inspired Tesla to build electric cars.

But when Tesla announced the Model S in 2009, very few people noticed that the concept car was based on a Mercedes CLS. Tesla did not spend time to produce a complete car, they assembled something the fastest they can to gauge customers’ interest.

The Tesla Model S Concept car was made with Mercedes parts. It gave them enough feedback to gauge customer feedback.

After the presentation of the Model S concept in 2009, 100,000 people shown interest. It was not firm orders, but it was enough data to show Tesla that the product resonated with customers. When the Model S was for sale in 2012, Tesla received 40,000 orders for the Model S.

Your MVP should not be perfect. It should be good enough to get feedback from the market and know if you are going in the right direction. Do not wait months to get feedback.

Ship, get feedback, fix. Repeat until you get traction.