Most successful MVPs aren’t exotic
If you study early versions of products that eventually succeeded, you notice something. The MVPs are rarely as clever as the eventual products. They’re often crude, narrow, and embarrassing-looking in retrospect.
What they share is shape. A few patterns repeat across many successful MVPs. They’re not formulas, but they’re common enough to be worth knowing. Each pattern handles the early-stage challenge — “how do we test the idea without overbuilding?” — in a particular way.
Knowing the patterns gives you a head start on the same challenge.
The Wizard of Oz
In this pattern, the product appears to do something automatically — when in fact a human is doing it behind the scenes.
Users submit a request. The product shows them a polished result a few hours or ...
