3 minimum viable product (MVP) examples to inspire you

What do Airbnb, Uber, and Dropbox all have in common? Well, apart from being massively successful startups, they’re all companies with seriously inspiring Minimum Viable Product examples, or MVPs for short. 

Each of these companies started with something small — a basic version of their product that solved a single core problem. No bells, no whistles. Just a scrappy solution, built to solve a real issue. That’s the power of an MVP: it helps you learn fast, fail cheap, and build something people actually want. 

In this article, we’ll break down what an MVP is, why it matters, and how you can use it to launch smarter, not harder.

What is a minimum viable product?

In a nutshell, an MVP is a product or service with just enough features to partially satisfy early customers. It gives them a taste of what’s in store. 

It’s not a finished product. It’s the first in a series of versions that go through iterations based on making smart guesses and testing them. This is just a fancy way of saying: ‘Create a minimalist version, get feedback, ramp up what works, and kill what doesn’t to make something better.’

This saves time and gives early adopters a glimpse of your product’s potential. Plus, it raises the chances of you creating something your customers need and love — without having to spend a fortune.

3 minimum viable product examples to learn from

So what does this have to do with Airbnb, Uber, and Dropbox? It’s simple. They all had incredibly basic MVPs.

Dropbox started life as a short pitch video, created to explain the concept to investors. Before Uber’s fare sharing, music control, and rating system, it was simply an app with one function: to connect iPhone owners with drivers and allow them to pay via credit card. Before Airbnb was a $30 billion company, it was Airbed&Breakfast — a few airbeds, a wifi connection, and breakfast in the two founders’ living room.

All three companies started out following the same process. They create an assumption, test it on a tiny scale, and then develop it incrementally.

Distilled down, an MVP loop is as simple as this:

Build > measure > learn > improve. 

A short history lesson

Let’s take things back a bit. The term Minimum Viable Product was popularized by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, and Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and writer known for launching the Customer Development method.

Reis and Blank spotted that many startups had incorrect assumptions about their customers’ needs. Nevertheless, they were still investing large amounts of time and money into creating a polished product based on these assumptions. A risky strategy if ever there was one.

No one wants a tumbleweed moment on the big launch day. So to take some of the risks out of this situation, they encouraged startups to get out there and spend more time in the field conducting experiments. 

These experiments involved releasing a bare-bones version of the product or service as early as possible. That’s the Minimum Viable Product that they then use to gather feedback.

The benefits of an MVP — more than just a money-saver

A minimum viable product isn’t just a cost-cutting exercise — it’s your fastest route to real-world learning. By releasing a stripped-back version of your idea, you can test assumptions, gather feedback, and improve quickly — all without blowing your budget.

Here’s what you gain:

• Lower development costs: Avoid wasting time (and money) on features no one needs.
• Real user feedback: Learn what actually works — straight from your audience.
• Proof of product–market fit: Find out if there’s real demand before going all-in.
• Less risk: Spot flaws and course-correct early, not after launch.
• Faster iteration: Ship, tweak, repeat. That’s how you get better, faster.
• Investor appeal: A live MVP with traction tells a stronger story than a pitch deck ever could.
• Team clarity: Keeps focus on what matters — not the “nice to haves.”
• User-first design: Feedback loops keep users front and center.
• Momentum: Even a basic product can spark buzz and build an early community.
  

And here’s a bonus benefit people often overlook: users like being part of the journey. When you ship an MVP, you’re inviting early adopters to help shape what comes next. Let them know it’s not the final product — just the beginning. When they see their input reflected in future versions, you’re not just building a better product. You’re building trust.

As startup veteran Steve Blank put it: “You’re selling the vision and delivering the minimum feature set to visionaries — not everyone.”

What about research?

If you’ve done your research, why bother prototyping? Well, while it’s true there’s no substitute for doing your homework, real users will still surprise you.

Often they don’t know what it is they want until they see it. To borrow the words of Stanley Kubrick — a filmmaker known for his meticulousness: “I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.”

If you build it, they will come… right?

Or so the saying goes. But, according to CB Insights, more than 50% of startups fail in their first four years because there’s either a lack of market need, they ignored their customers — or they ran out of cash. 

Even Amazon isn’t immune to epic product failures: its Fire Phone recorded a loss of $170 m. The reason for its flop? Its USP was that it offered you a quick way to purchase Amazon products — but customers could already do that on their current smartphones. A low-fidelity MVP would have saved Amazon some serious dough.

Creating an MVP essentially nips all that heartache and financial loss in the bud by helping you decide early on whether progression is the next logical step.

Releasing an MVP isn’t just a cost-efficient way of creating a marketable, viable product. It’s also an effective way of establishing whether or not the product should be built to begin with, using cold, hard facts. By creating an MVP, you’ll find out fast whether people are curious or couldn’t care less.

How to get started with an MVP

Ready to get the ball rolling? Just follow these steps. 

1. Understand the market

Before you build anything, you need to be absolutely certain you can solve a user problem. This means three things: you need to be sure the issue exists, that you can indeed fix it, and that there isn’t someone already doing it the way you want to do it. 

Imagine you’re developing a tool to help freelancers manage multiple clients without losing track of deadlines or invoices. You notice most freelancers are juggling spreadsheets, sticky notes, and email threads — and it’s costing them. 

So, you start digging deeper:

• What tools are they currently using?
• Where are they frustrated?
• How much admin time do they lose each week?
  

You interview 10 freelancers, run a short survey in a Reddit community, and do a competitor analysis on existing solutions. You discover the biggest frustration isn’t the lack of tools — it’s having too many that don’t talk to each other. That’s your entry point.

But it’s not just about getting your users — you need to know who’s already in the game. That’s where competitive analysis comes in. Look at what similar tools are out there, what users love, don’t like, and where there’s a gap. 

Ask yourself:

• What are competitors missing?
• Where are users getting frustrated or confused?
• Can we offer a faster, simpler, or cheaper alternative?

The goal isn’t to copy what exists — it’s to figure out how to do it differently. Your MVP doesn’t have to do everything better — just one thing that matters most.

Methodologies to use here include: 

• Competitor landscape analysis, which helps you see who you’re up against
• Discovery research, which helps you understand user needs and behaviours
• Generative research, which helps you identify problems, uncover opportunities, and build knowledge.
• Customer discovery, which tells you about your customers’ needs
• A SWOT analysis, which helps you spot strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
• Surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other forms of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

2. Define your core value proposition

Now that you know the problem, you need to clearly define what your MVP is promising to deliver — and to whom. We’re not talking a feature shopping list here. It’s about focusing on the transformation you’re offering.

Using our freelancer example:
“An all-in-one dashboard that helps freelancers keep track of client deadlines, invoices, and messages — without switching tabs or tools.”

This helps you and your team stay focused. You’re not building a full project management suite — you’re creating something useful and usable from day one.

3. Prioritize features ruthlessly

This is where many MVPs go off the rails: trying to do too much too soon. Your job now is to list all possible features and mercilessly cut anything non-essential.

Ask yourself:

• Does this help solve the core problem?
• Can users succeed without it (at least for now)?
• Is it vital for validating our value prop?
  

Maybe your feature list started with time tracking, invoicing, live chat, calendar sync, and proposal templates. For the MVP, you decide to include just three:

• A client dashboard
• Task tracking
• Invoice generator.
  

That’s it. You can add bells and whistles later — once users prove they care. 

4. Build a prototype, not a masterpiece

Forget perfect — focus on proving it works. Whether it’s a low-fidelity wireframe, a clickable prototype, or a basic web app built in no-code tools, the goal is to put it in front of people and watch what they actually do — not what they say they’ll do.

In our freelancer tool example, maybe you build a simple template and a landing page with a waitlist. 

As long as users can interact with the experience and give feedback, you’re doing it right.

5. Test with real users

Now it’s time to validate your MVP with real people. Ask users to try out your solution and observe what they do — not just what they say.

Before you open the floodgates, it’s worth running your MVP past a small, internal test group — your team, some friendly customers, or even just a few trusted industry contacts. This helps catch glaring usability issues and gives you a sneak peek at how real people interact with your product before you go wider.

It doesn’t need to be formal. A few short sessions with people clicking through your prototype can save you from releasing something confusing or broken. Once you’ve fixed the obvious stuff, then it’s time to gather richer insights from real people.

Tips for testing:

• Run moderated or unmoderated user tests
• Record sessions (with permission!) to spot patterns
• Ask questions like: “What would you expect to happen next?” or “Was anything confusing?”
  

In our case, you might find users love the invoicing tool but ignore the task tracker. That’s gold — now you know where to iterate.

6. Measure what matters

Tracking the right metrics can make or break your MVP. Focus on engagement, retention, and feedback — not vanity metrics.

Some smart early indicators:

• Time on task (Are users getting value quickly?)
• Repeat usage (Are they coming back?)
• Qualitative feedback (“This saved me hours!” vs. “Meh.”)
  

This data gives you proof of concept and the foundation to pitch to investors, or plan your next release.

7. Iterate and evolve

An MVP isn’t a destination — it’s a starting point. Maybe yours performed really well with its pared-back functions. Maybe your initial users love it as it is. It’s still not done! Don’t let temporary success blind you or the team from the final vision. 

Although you can learn a lot from this stage of your development process, it is still a stepping stone to your final, fleshed-out product. Take what you’ve learned and keep going. Double down on features users love, drop what they ignore, and stay focused on solving the core problem. Your next version doesn’t need to be your final product — just a better one.

Remember that loop: Build > measure > learn > improve.

That’s how MVPs grow into thriving businesses.

Caution ahead

MVPs sound like a no-brainer, right? Well, sort of. Due to the term’s vagueness and flexibility, people have applied it to pretty much everything and anything. Anything from a prototype to a fully marketable and designed product.

There’s a real challenge in defining exactly what a ‘minimum’ experience is. Ambitious product developers naturally want to add more features to give customers the best possible experience. But be warned: Feature creep could kill your MVP. 

The more features you add, the more money and time you spend. Before you know it, you have a marketable product that doesn’t encompass any proven customer feedback.

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

Define what ‘minimum’ really means. Otherwise, everyone will sneak in “just one more feature”.

Your checklist should typically include goals like spending as little money as possible, deciding which channels you’ll use to build brand awareness, and assigning ways to measure customer feedback. Whether you pin sticky notes up on a wall or track projects in a project management tool such as Backlog, make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Is it a product?

Never forget that your MVP is not the final product. 

Maybe it performed really well in its functions. Maybe your first cohort of users love it in its current form. It’s still not done. Don’t let temporary success blind you or the team from the final vision. Although you can learn a lot from this stage of your development process, it is still a stepping stone to your final, fleshed-out product.

Take what you’ve learned and keep going to your final vision. Only cut features if it truly makes sense after this trial run.

What are MLPs and MMPs?

Once your MVP is in the wild, you might hear terms like MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) and MMP (Minimum Marketable Product) thrown around. Don’t worry — they’re not just buzzwords.

An MLP is like your MVP with a heart. It still solves the core problem, but it does so in a way users genuinely enjoy — not just tolerate. Think of it as the version people would tell their friends about because it made their lives easier and brought a smile to their faces.

Then there’s the MMP. That’s when you’ve taken your validated MVP and added just enough polish to confidently sell it to your broader market. It’s got the features your early adopters helped shape, plus enough finesse to roll out at scale.

In short:

• MVP = Bare bones, maximum learning
• MLP = Early version that people actually love
• MMP = Ready-for-market product with proven value.
  

Use these phases to stay lean, but keep evolving. Each stage is a checkpoint — not the finish line.

Final thoughts

Managing an MVP build means juggling research, development, user testing, feedback loops, and teamwork — all on a tight timeline. That’s where solid project management software steps in. 

With Backlog, our own tool, you can prioritize features, break down goals into sprints, allocate resources efficiently, and keep everyone aligned on timelines. Plus, it makes tracking progress and feedback much more visible — so your team can iterate fast and keep moving forward with clarity and confidence.

If you decide to release an MVP, make sure your strategy is as unique as your business. And stay true to the lean, iterative process. Remember — Airbnb began life as three airbeds, two friends, and a wifi connection.

This post was originally published on March 13, 2021, and updated most recently on June 11, 2025.