What Is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in Tech?
Launch fast, learn early — discover how an MVP helps you test your idea, attract real users, and move your startup forward with focus.
What Is an MVP?
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It's the earliest version of a product that has just enough features to satisfy early customers and collect feedback for future development. Instead of building a perfect product, you launch a functional core and improve from there.
Why an MVP Helps You Win
An MVP lets you test your assumptions, validate market demand, and avoid wasting time and money on features no one wants. It's a smart and lean way to enter the market, especially for inventors and startups. And it brings you cash flow!
A Classic MVP: Bill Gates and MS-DOS
Back in 1980, Bill Gates and Microsoft delivered a barebones operating system — MS-DOS — to IBM. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. It solved a real problem, proved the concept, and set Microsoft on a path to dominate the software market. They launched fast, improved later, and won big.
In hindsight, this was a textbook example of a Minimum Viable Product — though the term didn't exist yet. The concept would only be formalized decades later, when Eric Ries introduced the MVP as a core element of his Lean Startup methodology: build a version with just enough functionality, launch early, and improve based on real user feedback.
Ries' bestselling book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (2011) made the MVP approach mainstream. It changed how founders think about product development, helping them avoid endless refinement and instead focus on real-world validation. While MS-DOS isn't mentioned in the book, Gates' strategy fits the pattern perfectly — proving that lean thinking existed long before it had a name.
Interested in the full story? Check out The Lean Startup by Eric Ries — a must-read for any founder thinking about launching their MVP.
That's exactly what the strategy Build to Sell is all about: deliver value early, not perfection. Create a minimal version, go to market, get paid — and learn.
MVP vs. Perfection: Focus on Progress
Many founders endlessly polish their invention. But MVP thinking says: test it live. If your product works — even in a basic form — it's ready to show. Real users, real feedback, real improvement.
Key Features of an MVP
| Aspect | MVP (Minimum Viable Product) |
|---|---|
| Goal | Deliver a working version to gather real user feedback |
| Scope | Only the essential features users need |
| Target | Actual end users in the market |
| Launch | Early release with core functionality |
| Timeline | Longer: product is used in the real world |
| Feedback | From real use, focused on user value |
| Outcome | Proof of value, insights for improvement |