How Do You Create A Successful MVP

brett fox
5 min readOct 9, 2024

Building your Minimal Viable Product is one of those supposed must do’s that you need to do when you start your company. The problem is that many startup CEOs don’t really understand what an MVP really is. Nor do these same CEOs know what defines a successful MVP.

Picture: Depositphotos

Well, I’m telling you, if you just follow the rules blindly, you’re going to get killed. You don’t need an MVP just to build an MVP. If you’re going to build an MVP, the MVP actually has to sell, because if it doesn’t sell, you’re not going to get any useful feedback.

In today’s article, I’m going to share with you five steps to building an MVP that sells. They’re pretty simple. They’re pretty straightforward, but guess what? They actually work. So let’s get started.

What’s an MVP?

Well, an MVP is just a fancy term for your first product that you build on the cheap. The key is the V which stands for viable. Now, viable means it has to sell. If it doesn’t sell, it’s not viable because you’ve wasted precious resources and, most importantly, time.

So let’s go through those five steps you need to develop a successful MVP. Let’s start with step number one:

1. Talk to customers first.

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brett fox

I work with startup CEOs to help them grow their businesses . I built several businesses from $0 to >$100M. Learn more at https://www.brettjfox.com