[kevinpet]

I'm not sure I understand you. If you're talking about the creative craft "What is Dropbox?" video, that was definitely post-MVP. Dropbox launched publicly with the ability to pay for it in Sept 2008. The video that made them take off like a rocket was in Sept 2009.

You could argue that sept 2008 was already post-MVP and they had what they considered a tentative MVP in March 2008 when they launched the private beta. Remember, the whole lean startup philosophy is about testing and learning. If they knew in March 2008 that their product was actually good enough to sell, then they should have let it out earlier.

I don't actually know anyone at Dropbox and I don't know if they are lean startup fans or if they would characterize anything this way, but I think it's a good example of the best case scenario for how you can build a great product: initial beta followed closely by minimal MVP with real paying customers, then some tweaking to get all the kinks worked out (technical and marketing), then one of your marketing pushes finds the market and you take off like mad.

[lucisferre]

I'm talking about this http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-prod...

Also that Eric specifically mentioned this in the book. I'm confused that this is surprising to you. I'm assuming you've read the Lean Startup?