Everyone thinks Minimum Viable Product, often called an “MVP,” means a smaller version of their app. That’s wrong, and it’s why so many first apps never ship.
The most important word in MVP isn’t “minimum.” It’s “viable.”
If you’re working on something new, you don’t actually have an app idea yet. You have a belief.
At best, you have a hypothesis that a group of people has a problem and that your solution could make their lives better.
An MVP is the fastest, cheapest way to find out if that hypothesis is true, before you spend three months building something nobody asked for.
It’s not a stripped-down version of your dream app. It’s an experiment. And an experiment only needs to be good enough to get you an honest answer and teach you something.
Before you open a single tool, ask yourself:
What is the one belief I need to test first?
Write it down. That question is what this whole series is about.
This is Lesson 1 in a series on building Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). The series covers how to turn an idea (or belief or hypothesis) into something testable, decide what to build first, and learn from real users without overbuilding.
