Minimum Sellable Product vs Minimum Viable Product

Speaker 0: can you take a deep dive into your dislike of mvp versus what i call the msp?

Speaker 1: yeah. and i love the term, you know, minimal sellable product because the thing is the problem with the mvp is you prioritize different tools to build in an mvp than in an msp. k. so what's the difference? if it's an msp, if it's a minimal sellable product, you will prioritize building things that you can sell. so, for example, in our situation, we built some things on the back end that the client could not see, but it allowed us to deliver a certain output in the first year. so, yes, there was more human intervention, but it allowed us to take the product and sell it and acquire customers. and we acquired blue chip clients in year one because we prioritize building some stuff on the back end that allowed us to do certain type of trend analysis. if i was building an mvp, i would have focused on building more of a user experience that the client could access, which meant so much time would go to doing the front end, to doing user experience. that stuff is what sucks up time. building and optimizing user experience, making sure the flow works and stuff doesn't break, my god, is that time consuming. and one little mistake and the client's pissed and it's not working. so that's why i take a bit of a dislike to mvp because it forces you to prioritize things that don't get the money in. instead, it prioritizes things that gets you vc money because the vc sees the product and they go, oh, okay. it's looking a certain way, and i can see how you can sell this thing. and so it's the in my mind, at least, it's the wrong prioritization. you should be building stuff that can get revenue and not building stuff that is making you give up your company.

Speaker 0: yeah. that's a really great way of putting it. i think of an mvp could be like a diagram on a napkin because you're talking about showing your concept to somebody, whether that's a potential cofounder or an investor, but that's not usually sellable. like, i can't say, will you give me five hundred dollars for this napkin for a month? so it's the sellable part is, okay. i've got this functioning thing that people are ready to pay for. and those are two different things, and i agree that the target for an mvp is for cofounders. it's for the pitch deck. it's for, investors. it's for a different community than your customer.

Speaker 1: i just met, and i can't, go into details about them because of a very, very strong nda. but i just met a very, very interesting company, and they've just spent a year and a half building an mvp. and my first question was, have you tried selling this thing? they said, yeah. okay. how much revenue did you bring in? two hundred bucks, five hundred bucks. but your pitch deck says you are going to build a billion dollar company. that's what your pitch deck says. and then you haven't been able to sell even a thousand dollars. something's off. yet the vc will give them money. but i won't. right? because it's the mindset is different. so i think this is where i try to tell founders, you gotta think here. do you want to take the shortcut, or or do you wanna do things the hard way but the right way? and, you know, by again, i'll just reiterate. i'm not saying nobody should go get vc money. of course, you should for the right reasons and at the right times. and for me, the greatest benefit of entrepreneurship is the sense of ownership, the joy you get when you solve big problems. as an entrepreneur, that was so satisfying, solving problems, building a company, hiring people. you know? when we had the exit, a lot of our employees who were shareholders all had significant impacts on their lives. like, these are the things that i think matters at the end of the day. so i think just to get philosophical for a second, i think these are the questions you have to ask yourself before you figure out what your route you wanna take, you know, mvp or msp.