Minimum Useful Product

The common thing widely known in the startup community when it comes to building a new product or service is to build what is called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Some have moved to developing what they refer to as a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP). I've personally developed a new process that I call Minimum Useful Product (MUP).

On the surface it may seem like these are all the same but they're not. The premise behind MVP is to build a product or service with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback you can use to improve the product. And while this can work in some cases, what is viable is not necessarily useful.

Similarly, a MLP might be a lovable product but chances are you might have over-engineered your product to get it to a point where early customers can love it. This can add a lot of unnecessary work to validate an idea you hope to determine if its worth continuing building or not.

On the other hand, a MUP must focus on being minimally useful, meaning its not only usable but its valued by the customer such that they can overlook its lack of features and be willing to provide feedback so that you can improve the product while they stay a customer. This is important.

An MVP might be good enough to get feedback but it might not be good enough to sustain a customer and continuing to churn customers while you iterate on your MVP is costly. An MLP might be an awesome first version but it might have cost you a lot of time and money to get to market only to discover no one actually loves what you've built. MUP is a great middle ground.

Now, does that mean you have to build an actual functioning product or spend more time building the first version? No. Just like with many MVP where you do the minimum needed to get a working product, you can do the same with a MUP. The biggest difference is in what features matter most to get the user to stick at this early stage because it solves a big enough pain point that they're willing to use and continue to use an incomplete product.