Scope your MVP around one painful job, not a feature list
MVPs fail when they try to be small versions of the full product. The ones that win solve one expensive problem completely, for one type of customer.
The founders arrive with a 60-feature roadmap and ask which 20 make the MVP. It's the wrong question. A smaller version of everything is still a product nobody needs badly enough to pay for.
Find the one job that hurts
In discovery interviews we look for the moment a customer describes a workaround with visible frustration: a spreadsheet they hate, a weekly task that eats an afternoon, a mistake that cost them money. That's the job. The MVP does that job completely, and almost nothing else.
- They already spend time or money on a workaround
- It happens frequently: weekly, not annually
- Failure has a cost they can name
What to cut, and what never to cut
Cut settings, integrations nobody has asked for, admin dashboards and second personas. Never cut onboarding, billing or analytics. Without those you can't learn whether the bet is working, and you can't prove it to investors.
The takeaway
Revenue from 14 design partners on a narrow product beats 400 sign-ups on a broad one. Narrow products can be widened; unwanted ones can't be fixed.
- MVP
- Product discovery
- Start-ups
