MVP is one of the many words which has undergone corruption and softened in meaning through people's personal interpretations (Pivot, Startup...other increasingly vague terms).<p>The approach put forward here is not exactly new - if you read Ash Maurya's Running Lean (<a href="http://www.runningleanhq.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.runningleanhq.com</a>) he talks extensively on using a rich landing page (rather than a 'viral' launchrock-style page) to accelerate validated learning. The classic DropBox video example is another piece of classic Lean case material. What these both somewhat lack is the 'P' of MVP. Product.<p>I'd suggest this is 'practical application of Lean Startup principles' rather than MVP - people tend to talk about 'building their MVP' and that process hasn't begun in this case. Validated learning is critical, and getting a headstart on it in this way is a useful technique, but blurring the distinction of early-stage customer development and the actual MVP doesn't help the discussion. It makes the conversation around desirable qualities of a public MVP somewhat harder.
A minimum viable product is something that customers can actually <i>use</i>. Something that you can sell, that people are willing to pay money for.<p>This?<p>> We did everything possible to not show that we hadn't even started the back-end yet.<p>Is testing marketing and UI design. Which is great. But it's not an MVP.
The cicles do not make sense to me. Minumum viable means the result of the lowest effort/functionality that leads to a viable product. Using overlapping circles just does not work at all, I'd say<p>Using minimal without viable is somewhat strange. If you look at a program: What is minimal? Hello World? No, I can still do "int main(){ }"! But wait, this still does a context switch... IMO it just does not make sense to say something is "minimal" (but not viable). it's better to say there is viable and not viable and within viable thing, you can head for minimal, too.
If you feel a swelling sense of pride every time you publish a mockup or do an a/b test you might be missing the point of MVP -- solving a problem without getting caught up in process.
I got a new term for this. A fake MVP. Think it's a cool concept, as long as you only fool a couple people (around 10 ~ 50 and not thousands) with it to get some feedback.
<i>Good customer development is filming the trailer and then deciding whether to make the movie.</i><p>FWIW: Tarantino & Rodriguez's movie _Grindhouse_ included several fake movie trailers. They were so popular that _Machete_ and _Hobo_With_A_Shotgun_ were turned into real movies with good boxoffice returns; more such projects are underway.