Process & Design
An MVP is the earliest version of a product that includes only the core features needed to deliver value to early adopters and generate validated learning about the market — with everything else deferred.
The MVP concept, popularised by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup, is a risk-reduction strategy: instead of spending months building a full-featured product based on assumptions, teams ship the smallest working version that tests whether the core value proposition resonates with real users. Feedback from MVP users — engagement metrics, support requests, and direct interviews — informs which features to build next, preventing investment in capabilities nobody wants. An MVP is not a low-quality product; it must be functional and valuable enough for users to actually use it and provide meaningful feedback. Successful MVPs have launched companies like Dropbox (a demo video before the product existed) and Airbnb (a simple website to rent one apartment).
Example
A legal tech startup builds an MVP with just a contract upload and AI clause-highlighting feature, skips the full case-management module, and validates that lawyers will pay before building further.
Related terms
Agile
Agile is a software development philosophy that prioritises iterative delivery, collaboration, customer feedback, and adaptability to change over rigid upfront planning and documentation.
Scrum
Scrum is an Agile framework for managing complex work in which cross-functional teams deliver working increments of a product in fixed-length iterations called sprints, guided by defined roles, events, and artefacts.
UX (User Experience)
UX (User Experience) is the holistic quality of a person's interaction with a product — encompassing ease of use, efficiency, accessibility, emotional response, and satisfaction — shaped through research, information architecture, and iterative design.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS is a cloud delivery model in which software is hosted by a provider and accessed by users over the internet via a browser or thin client, with no local installation required.
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