How Long Did You Build Your MVP?

Mark Prutskiy
11 replies
We built our MVP almost 1 year, but it was a dramatic mistake. How long did you build your MVP? Our MVP: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bumpy-meet-new-people-globally/id1455336523

Replies

Andrew Isherwood
Nice, looks great, for us and the original feature and entire premise of Team-Today, about 3 weeks. But building a single function webapp isn't quite as time-consuming and complex as a matching app with integrated comms. We've always tried to restrict the scope of new features down to a 2-week MVP. They sometimes sit behind a feature flag while we just let a subset of users review it.
Mark Prutskiy
@andrew_isherwood1 Thanks for sharing the details. It's fast! Did you get the expected results with the MVP?
Andrew Isherwood
@mark_prutskiy Thanks. Yeah, I think so, it gave us some direction on how to progress and what to invest our development time in. It's a bit of a cliche but the pattern works
While a prototype can be built in a weekend, and a simple MVP can be up in 2 or 3 weeks, every product build is different. But it took us three to four months to build our MVP, because we made one, revised it and then repeated the process until we were satisfied with the results.
Guillaume Mathieu
Hi Mark thanks for sharing! Can you elaborate on the dramatic mistake? Is it because you ended up spending time and resources on building lots of features without proper user feedback? Kind of doing the same... took us one year to ship. Had read somewhere that the mention of MVP is outdated, better consider MVF (minimum viable features), ship quickly, and iterate towards a real product.
Mark Prutskiy
@guillaume_mathieu1 yeah totally agree. We had the same feeling.
Mark Prutskiy
@guillaume_mathieu1 the main problem was that we were technical founders without experience in startup and wanted to build a spaceship, which we thought anybody wanted, but it was not true. Agree with MVF. It's a more clarified meaning. Can you say also why you build a product around 1 year?
Guillaume Mathieu
@mark_prutskiy kind of same story, first startup and two eng founders. It takes time to build things in the right way. I think it was in the Lean startup book that the author said that if when you launch your product, you are not a bit ashamed of it, it means you spent too much time on it... not easy to apply
Brad
I just started working on it, Wish me luck and success.
Helen Fiala
Hi there! Marketing manager of a new product here - after focusing on an MVP for almost a year , we slightly pivoted, built a dummy on figma within a week and then a working MVP within 2 weeks, best decision we've ever made! So much valuable product feedback from users... All the best for your journey!
Mark Prutskiy
@helen_fiala that's how I now see MVP as well. Great decision! Thanks, you too :)