MVP

Say you want to build a ride-sharing app like Uber. You could spend two years building every feature — scheduling, ratings, payment splitting, corporate accounts, driver analytics. Or you could build the simplest possible version: a button that connects a rider to a driver. That's your MVP.

An MVP is the stripped-down version of your product that has just enough features to test whether people actually want it. It's not perfect. It's not pretty. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles. But it works well enough to answer the most important question: will anyone actually use this?

The idea is: don't build the whole thing until you know someone wants it. Ship something small, see if people care, then improve it based on real feedback. Too many people spend months building the "perfect" product only to find out nobody wanted it in the first place.

Because this concept will save you massive amounts of time. Whether you're building a SaaS, a content site, or a physical product — start with the MVP. Get it in front of people. Learn what they actually want. Then build more. I built my first app as an MVP and learned more in two weeks of real user feedback than I did in three months of building alone.

MVP is a lean startup concept popularized by Eric Ries. It's the minimum set of features needed to validate a business hypothesis with real users. Key principle: build-measure-learn cycles. Related concepts include MLP (Minimum Lovable Product), which emphasizes user experience, and RAT (Riskiest Assumption Test), which focuses on validating the biggest risk first.