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4 min read · Saturday, August 9, 2025
Every product creator has the same horror movie playing in their head: months (or years) of blood, sweat, and caffeine sacrificed to bring a product into the world… only to launch it and hear nothing but the soft, mocking hum of your server fan. The market is a graveyard of “brilliant” products that nobody wanted — not because they were badly built, but because they solved problems no one cared enough to pay for.
Enthusiasm is great — it keeps you going during those “I’m eating instant noodles again” nights — but it can also turn into the world’s most overrated pair of blinders. As a product leader, your job isn’t to be the cheerleader in the corner yelling “We’ve got this!” — it’s to be the lead skeptic who quietly whispers, “Do we need this, though?” before you commit the next few months of your life.
This isn’t dream-crushing. This is dream-salvaging. You’re not killing your ideas — you’re making sure they don’t grow up to be expensive disappointments.
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is one of the most tragically misunderstood concepts especially for early-stage product builders. They usually either "launch too early" or "wait too long". What do those mean, you ask? — If you launched a buggy and clunky product, then you launched too soon. If your product is bug-free but you keep extending the feature-set, then you're waiting too long.
An MVP is the tiniest experiment you can run to find out if your idea works in the wild. Think of it like this: if your big vision is a car, your MVP isn’t a three-wheeled sedan with no air conditioning. Your MVP is a skateboard.
The skateboard tests the most important question: “Do people actually want a faster way to get from Point A to Point B?” You start there. Maybe users love it but wish it had handlebars (a scooter), which morphs into a bicycle, then a motorcycle, and — eventually — the shiny sports car you dreamed of.
The point: your MVP is not “the first step toward building the product you want.” It’s “the first step toward figuring out if you should build the product at all.”
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is one of the most tragically misunderstood concepts especially for early-stage product builders. They usually either “launch too early” or “wait too long”. What do those mean, you ask? — If you launched a buggy and clunky product, then you launched too soon. If your product is bug-free but you keep extending the feature-set, then you’re waiting too long.
An MVP is the tiniest experiment you can run to find out if your idea works in the wild. Think of it like this: if your big vision is a car, your MVP isn’t a three-wheeled sedan with no air conditioning. Your MVP is a skateboard.
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The skateboard tests the most important question: “Do people actually want a faster way to get from Point A to Point B?” You start there. Maybe users love it but wish it had handlebars (a scooter), which morphs into a bicycle, then a motorcycle, and — eventually — the shiny sports car you dreamed of.
The point: your MVP is not “the first step toward building the product you want.” It’s “the first step toward figuring out if you should build the product at all.”
Before you even make an MVP, you can run cheaper, quicker tests to see if anyone cares. These tests measure intent, which is far more reliable than polite compliments from friends who just don’t want to crush your entrepreneurial spirit.
Smoke Tests: The “fake door” classic. You put a button on your site that says, “Try Our New [Feature Name]!” When someone clicks, instead of the feature, they see: “Coming Soon! Sign up to hear when it’s ready.” You’re measuring click-throughs — AKA: “Do people even want to open this door, or are they just walking past?”
Landing Page Tests: Make a simple page with a clear pitch, mockups, and one big CTA: “Sign Up for Early Access” or “Pre-order Now.” Run some targeted ads. If 10% of visitors sign up, great. If 0.5% sign up, maybe your pitch needs work… or maybe the product belongs in the idea recycling bin.
A/B Testing Concepts: Can’t decide which problem your product solves best? Test both. Two pages, two messages, same traffic. The winner tells you which pain point is worth building around.
Here’s a truth: people lie. Not maliciously — it’s just easier to say “That sounds cool” than to crush your hopes with a “Nope.”
If you ask, “Would you use an app that does X?” most will smile and say yes, then forget about it before dinner. That’s why verbal enthusiasm is the weakest form of evidence.
Here’s your evidence spectrum:
Design your tests to ask for some commitment. Even small commitments filter out the polite “maybes” from the people who are already waving their wallets in your direction.
By staying skeptical now, you massively increase your odds of being called a “visionary” later — instead of “that person who spent $200k building an app no one downloaded.”
Remember: Build what people will pay for, not just what they’ll clap for.
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