A lot of MVP failures have nothing to do with the viability of the core product itself. In fact, in over 20 years of building, delivering, and studying both successful and failed products, these are the most common mistakes that I’ve seen ultimately doom an MVP:
- The company can’t onboard customers properly or quickly.
- The user experience isn’t defined.
- The customer experience isn’t executed according to plan.
- One or more outliers grow unchecked until the product falls over.
- The front line of support doesn’t know how to solve or escalate problems.
None of those mistakes are rooted in the core product itself. In fact, in all those cases, the core product never got a chance to live or die on its own, because the first impression of that core product got botched right out of the gate.