I hate the term minimum viable product.
No customer wants something that is merely viable. Viable implies “meh”. I want to build things customers love, even if it is just a slice of a much bigger thing.
My definition:
Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) is the thing that takes the least time, energy, and resources to build such that customers say they love it and the builders learn how to make it even better. The point of an MLP is feedback, not invoices.
The best MLPs result in customers saying some version of “God, I love this, and it sucks in this way”. People do not complain about things they do not love. Silence is validation: validation that the product hypothesis was completely wrong.
Low friction is critical for any MLP and friction can be measured on how customers…
- Discover
- Understand
- Start using
- Get value from
- Continue using
… the MLP.
I’ll pick on #2 to illustrate: Does a landing page that leads with Book a Demo meet the low friction bar? Not a chance. I have to get on someone’s calendar before I can try this? Lol.
The MLP is the smallest thing that still earns love and makes the above five moments almost unfairly easy.
After friction, the builder of the MLP must be crystal clear on whether the product is a pain killer or a vitimin:
There are two types of products in the world: painkillers and vitamins.
You can build a great business on vitamins. You just have to sell the hell out of them. Insurance is an example of a vitamin. Consider how much insurance companies spend on advertising and marketing.
The products that fly off the shelves with less selling are painkillers. The customer has pain and will pay through the nose to make that pain go away. Sales and marketing are still important, but mostly for awareness.
Builders must challenge themselves:
- Is the thing we’re building a nice-to-have that makes life a little better, or does it hit deep pain?
- Have we removed all friction that’s possible to remove across all of the moments listed above?
- What is the thing we can build, that we believe customers will love and tell us about, that costs us the least amount to build?
What are you shipping that people love enough to curse?