[buss]

I must agree. MVP is getting thrown around and twisted like "pivot" did a few months ago. A video is not an MVP, because it's neither viable nor a product.

A video is great and, if done right, it's immensely useful at quickly explaining the value of the product your're building. It is not a product, though.

An MVP for dropbox would be something like a directory with a git repo that auto-commits everything and has a cron job push to & pull from a remote server every minute.

[kanamekun]

Here's how Eric defined MVP:

<< First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. ...

Second, the definition's use of the words maximum and minimum means it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense.

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-... >>

By that definition, it feels like a video could definitely qualify as an MVP? It allowed them to validate important learnings about customers with the least effort... not so different from an AdWords MVP smoke test:

http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-to-go-from-i...

In any case, it sounds like Drew programmed enough to create a prototype but not enough for it to have the polish required for a user to be able see that it "work[ed] seamlessly" or "worked just like magic." So in that sense, the video did allow him to exert less effort and still test his customer hypothesis.

[plinkplonk]

"Here's how Eric defined MVP:

<< First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. ...

Second, the definition's use of the words maximum and minimum means it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense."

In other words, the definition is so broad and stretchable that any successful effort can be retroactively called an MVP, just like all successful software projects are claimed to be "agile" in some fashion (or lean or whatever the latest fad is).

MVP, pivot, Lean Startup(TM) - all this sounds like something tailored primarily to sell books and seminars, not what successful startups do. Now that Drew is successful, I am sure what he did will be held up as an example of the latest faux methodology. I am waiting for the Eric Ries post that portrays Steve Jobs as a "lean startup" visionary.