8 ms·

Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead (2017)

61 points by DantesKite 2y ago

mdorazio 2y ago
I'm actually going to disagree with this post because it's a tangential problem to what MVPs are supposed to be for. If you're operating on a shoestring budget in a competitive environment (i.e. most pre-money startups), you don't know if your idea is worth making "slick", so you build the minimum usable feature set that will get you feedback from actual customers. I've seen far too many developers (and hardware engineers) go down a path similar to what the author is proposing, only to find out that they spent a bunch of time making a simple, complete thing that no one actually wanted. Start with MVP, see if it resonates, then you can spend the time to go for SLC.
- ssgodderidge 2y ago
  > “MVPs are too M and rarely V. Customers see that, and hate it. It might be great for the product team, but it’s bad for customers. And ultimately, what’s bad for customers is bad for the company.” I think the author agrees with you in part— MVP’s are objectively better for product teams to get feedback faster. I agree with you that the idea of an MVP can’t be dismissed in all scenarios. Get it “viable” enough that it feels complete. Get feedback and move from there.
ActionHank 2y ago
It's pretty obvious that if you don't consider what the customer wants your product will miss the mark. The argument an MVP excludes actually meeting customer's requirements is pretty misguided.
- kevingadd 2y ago
  I've seen that exact argument made and put into practice, though. i.e. the unironically promoted approach of "add a button for a feature you think users will want, and then show an error message when they click it after collecting metrics" Some people have a really delusional definition of "viable"
rabbits77 2y ago
The article seems to be attacking MVPs which are not "viable". In the included graph of the development of a car I have seen version which show exactly the preferred path of development skateboard --> scooter --> bike ... as an example of an MVP! Here the author uses a new initialism "SLC" to describe this preferred path of development and the only reason seems to be some experience dealing with non-viable MVPs.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  >>> skateboard --> scooter --> bike ... Car This is the core problem with MVP in many cases.... engineers end up having to put an engine, seats and doors on a skateboard rather than clean slate at every step.
  - amluto 2y ago
    Forget the factory. A skateboard, a scooter and a car are not similar enough for this to make much sense. Tesla pulled off an MVP, the Roadster, that actually made sense: they built a drivetrain (which was their actual innovation) and sold inside someone else’s car. It was minimal: they focused on what would distinguish them (it was a fast EV!) but didn’t have much else going on; it was viable (one could drive it and have fun); and it was a product (one could actually buy it). But it was a car, not a skateboard or a scooter. It demonstrated that they could build an electric car that was fun to drive and had respectable range. An electric scooter wouldn’t have done that, and might not have had much to distinguish Tesla from, say, Mission Motors. Scooters have been able to go large distances with small amounts of fuel for a long time.
engineer_22 2y ago
SLC: Simple, Lovable, Complete
- master_crab 2y ago
  Yes! The fact I had to read halfway through the article to get the acronym annoyed me to no end.
ramon156 2y ago
Introduction should cover what an SLC is, I had to force myself to read through an article I might not even have been interested in
- lupire 2y ago
  You don't have to force yourself. You can choose not to read clickbait.
  - spoiler 2y ago
    Clickbaits are hard to tell they are click bait until it's already too late, though. One doesn't expect it on HN either!
scubbo 2y ago
Other folks have already made the correct point that the author has just come up with a new initialism for what MVP actually means, but I'd like to add that describing your product as "lovable" is gross manipulative arrogant marketing speak. With _very_ rare (and probably unhealthy) exceptions (Apple springs to mind), customers don't love products - they just use them, or at best appreciate them.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  MVP: My demo ended up in production and now were trying to scale SQLight to 1000s of concurrent users help! If you want to build an MVP im all for it. It is 100% throw away. Don't try to "add a feature" don't try to "expand" ... You cut corners in design and spec Im gonna cut them in engineering. Let's all take the lessons we learned and build something good after.
  - xboxnolifes 2y ago
    Sure, we can define MVP to mean prototype and then it makes it a prototype, but is that useful? Minimum viable product still means it's a viable product. If it's 100% throwaway, it wasn't viable.
    - zer00eyz 2y ago
      Fair: MVP lauches and the PM is at my desk. Hey we need these 5 features that you told me I would want but I swore would never be in the product. MVP launches and the PM is at my desk. Hey this thing that I would have found if I took a paper prototype out on the street and showed it to random people would have been apparent ... well now we need that. Hell I have told PM's that their print on demand product needed a dirty words filter. They told me I was wrong. Guess what the first feature was post launch in a panic. It's not like I haven't said "If you're launching in Germany you need to take checks" and then had someone come back when the sales numbers were dismal till they started taking checks. (And dear god someone tell me that Germany is past this). Candidly most MVP's miss the minimum and viable because the people who are defining those things are making guesses with out doing a lot of research. Ethnography, Usability, all these things are much cheaper than development, and yet we dont do them... Fuck it were doin it live.
itsanaccount 2y ago
Its a completly different factory to build a skateboard vs a bike vs a car. Scale, tooling, materials, what happens when things go wrong, etc are all different. Product people never seem to appreciate that bit.
- chewbacha 2y ago
  When I saw that diagram I laughed. What they are recommending is a complete rework for each cycle!!
jph 2y ago
If you try to build "Simple, Lovable, Complete" then you're likely taking too long to ship. Success with MVP looks like this: "Frank in accounting says he hates it, and thinks it's ugly, but says he'll use it because it saves him ten minutes every day. And he wants to talk with you today about why it sucks so much right now."
- fsloth 2y ago
  Exactly! You don’t want love, you want users to be compelled to use the product for whatever reason. I don’t love a hammer but it’s a super compelling option when I have some nails…
MissTake 2y ago
I’m working on doing a total replacement of an existing system that’s been in use for a decade. Right now I’m focusing on the logic and internals and have no UI work done. I’ll release a MVP without the UI because the users are very adapt at backend query and would much rather get off the current system than delay waiting for me to do a total front end. That’s our MVP and I’ve total buyin from the business Nothing wrong with MVP when everyone is aware of what that means.
pstoll 2y ago
The classic “big reveal” style of communication - hiding the important thing until half way through. Don’t bury the lede! It confuses and distracts the reader who is looking for how to frame and read everything else. “SLC = simple, lovable, complete. Let me tell you why this is better than MVP.” It ain’t hard, folks.
- airstrike 2y ago
  It was so annoying that I just skimmed through until I found the bolded terms, realized I disagree with the hot take and closed the tab without further reading. Maybe I'm wrong to do so and missed out on some invaluable piece of advice, but if the message is this boring, confusing and wasteful of the reader's time, maybe that's not on me
  - rokkitmensch 2y ago
    You did fine. "Knowing what not to read is the wonder weapon", to repurpose the old joke. Every paragraph without a thesis statement loses another significant fraction of readers.
- simonklitj 2y ago
  Thank you! Didn’t even bother to read it when it wasn’t immediately clear what SLC means.
riedel 2y ago
A 2017 is missing in the title (guess it matters as this was a total different point in the agile hype cycle) Wonder why this recently pops up recently[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371502
lettergram 2y ago
lol just reinventing the wheel imo — MVP really just means “minimum product people are willing to pay for (and sometimes just use)” It’s correct to say 98% of your target market won’t want to use that product. That said, the 2% that do will help iterate and refine for the remaining folks. To get the initial folks identify the problem and folks willing to work with you. Sure, that’s about it. “Simple, lovable, complete” sounds nice, but that sounds like features. Good luck building a car, word doc, space ship, new drug, etc with that lol those are products, not independent micro-services
jrochkind1 2y ago
If your customers hate it, how can it be viable?
- fsloth 2y ago
  Because love vs hate is completely wrong way to view the product - unless it’s some pointless fluff. Users can be compelled to use a product because it solves a problem for them, but it may have features and bugs that cause them to hate it. Which is a great signal to invest and fix those bugs. The most negative result from mvp isn’t hate - it’s indifference.
pknerd 2y ago
Did not know MVP meant a "broken" product.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
glimmung 2y ago
This completely fails to address the significance of the word "viable" in MVP - it's only meaningful if we define what it's viable _for_. In a startup it may be "viable to test a hypothesis", in a running business it may be "viable to implement a new workflow". In either case the logic of the MVP approach holds - do the least you need to do to learn what to do next. One could argue that "simple" in their SLC is analogous to "minimal", and "lovable" to "viable".
dumbfounder 2y ago
For successful companies the rules are different. They can’t afford to push out crap to see what sticks because their customers will get pissed. If you have no customers, you need to iterate much more quickly until you find something that can viably get you some customers. Or you can do an SLC as a startup if you are VERY confident you are doing something people will love. That confidence can pay off, but playing the odds it usually doesn’t.
benreesman 2y ago
If I was going to re-brand a great idea with a legitimate tweak in emphasis it would be “dogfooding”: the denotational semantics are almost right, but the term combines the wrong emphasis (force yourself to use something intended for others, almost never a recipe for great work) with a mental picture that is less than appetizing. pg has written about this so extensively and effectively that it would be a waste of any readers time for me to footnote: go read all his essays with an emphasis on the earliest ones if you haven’t: they’re great. I’m not the writer someone like pg is by a long way and so I’m both making the argument less well and don’t have a great alternative proposal, but I bet someone on HN has a good name for this. Instead I’ll share a memorable quote from a world-famous chef that stayed with me: Thomas Keller has two restaurants in Northern California: The French Laundry and Bouchon. He’s quoted as saying that “The French Laundry is where I create meals I like to make, Bouchon is where I make meals I like to eat.” What’s an alternative to “dogfooding” that describes the process of building some simple, lovable, and complete by building something that you yourself prefer to any existing substitute or alternative?
FranklinMaillot 2y ago
1. Define a popular term or process in a very restrictive way. 2. Explain why it doesn't work. 3. Coin your own acronym to describe how most people actually understand the original term. I call this the R3 pattern, for Restrict, Reject, Rename. :)
- unraveller 2y ago
  1. Find a dead horse 2. Liven it up with feelgood make-up 3. Overhype it to death 4. Glory FLOG pattern FTW.
mock-possum 2y ago
minimum viable product, it’s right there in the name. If you customers hate it, then it’s not really viable, is it? And if they do, but they use it anyway, then mission accomplished… I’m really not down with this article.

61 points by DantesKite 2y ago

I'm actually going to disagree with this post because it's a tangential problem to what MVPs are supposed to be for. If you're operating on a shoestring budget in a competitive environment (i.e. most pre-money startups), you don't know if your idea is worth making "slick", so you build the minimum usable feature set that will get you feedback from actual customers. I've seen far too many developers (and hardware engineers) go down a path similar to what the author is proposing, only to find out that they spent a bunch of time making a simple, complete thing that no one actually wanted. Start with MVP, see if it resonates, then you can spend the time to go for SLC.

ssgodderidge 2y ago
> “MVPs are too M and rarely V. Customers see that, and hate it. It might be great for the product team, but it’s bad for customers. And ultimately, what’s bad for customers is bad for the company.” I think the author agrees with you in part— MVP’s are objectively better for product teams to get feedback faster. I agree with you that the idea of an MVP can’t be dismissed in all scenarios. Get it “viable” enough that it feels complete. Get feedback and move from there.

ActionHank 2y ago

It's pretty obvious that if you don't consider what the customer wants your product will miss the mark. The argument an MVP excludes actually meeting customer's requirements is pretty misguided.

kevingadd 2y ago
I've seen that exact argument made and put into practice, though. i.e. the unironically promoted approach of "add a button for a feature you think users will want, and then show an error message when they click it after collecting metrics" Some people have a really delusional definition of "viable"

rabbits77 2y ago

The article seems to be attacking MVPs which are not "viable". In the included graph of the development of a car I have seen version which show exactly the preferred path of development skateboard --> scooter --> bike ... as an example of an MVP! Here the author uses a new initialism "SLC" to describe this preferred path of development and the only reason seems to be some experience dealing with non-viable MVPs.

zer00eyz 2y ago
>>> skateboard --> scooter --> bike ... Car This is the core problem with MVP in many cases.... engineers end up having to put an engine, seats and doors on a skateboard rather than clean slate at every step.
- amluto 2y ago
  Forget the factory. A skateboard, a scooter and a car are not similar enough for this to make much sense. Tesla pulled off an MVP, the Roadster, that actually made sense: they built a drivetrain (which was their actual innovation) and sold inside someone else’s car. It was minimal: they focused on what would distinguish them (it was a fast EV!) but didn’t have much else going on; it was viable (one could drive it and have fun); and it was a product (one could actually buy it). But it was a car, not a skateboard or a scooter. It demonstrated that they could build an electric car that was fun to drive and had respectable range. An electric scooter wouldn’t have done that, and might not have had much to distinguish Tesla from, say, Mission Motors. Scooters have been able to go large distances with small amounts of fuel for a long time.

engineer_22 2y ago

SLC: Simple, Lovable, Complete

master_crab 2y ago
Yes! The fact I had to read halfway through the article to get the acronym annoyed me to no end.

ramon156 2y ago

Introduction should cover what an SLC is, I had to force myself to read through an article I might not even have been interested in

lupire 2y ago
You don't have to force yourself. You can choose not to read clickbait.
- spoiler 2y ago
  Clickbaits are hard to tell they are click bait until it's already too late, though. One doesn't expect it on HN either!

scubbo 2y ago

Other folks have already made the correct point that the author has just come up with a new initialism for what MVP actually means, but I'd like to add that describing your product as "lovable" is gross manipulative arrogant marketing speak. With _very_ rare (and probably unhealthy) exceptions (Apple springs to mind), customers don't love products - they just use them, or at best appreciate them.

zer00eyz 2y ago
MVP: My demo ended up in production and now were trying to scale SQLight to 1000s of concurrent users help! If you want to build an MVP im all for it. It is 100% throw away. Don't try to "add a feature" don't try to "expand" ... You cut corners in design and spec Im gonna cut them in engineering. Let's all take the lessons we learned and build something good after.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  Sure, we can define MVP to mean prototype and then it makes it a prototype, but is that useful? Minimum viable product still means it's a viable product. If it's 100% throwaway, it wasn't viable.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    Fair: MVP lauches and the PM is at my desk. Hey we need these 5 features that you told me I would want but I swore would never be in the product. MVP launches and the PM is at my desk. Hey this thing that I would have found if I took a paper prototype out on the street and showed it to random people would have been apparent ... well now we need that. Hell I have told PM's that their print on demand product needed a dirty words filter. They told me I was wrong. Guess what the first feature was post launch in a panic. It's not like I haven't said "If you're launching in Germany you need to take checks" and then had someone come back when the sales numbers were dismal till they started taking checks. (And dear god someone tell me that Germany is past this). Candidly most MVP's miss the minimum and viable because the people who are defining those things are making guesses with out doing a lot of research. Ethnography, Usability, all these things are much cheaper than development, and yet we dont do them... Fuck it were doin it live.

itsanaccount 2y ago

Its a completly different factory to build a skateboard vs a bike vs a car. Scale, tooling, materials, what happens when things go wrong, etc are all different. Product people never seem to appreciate that bit.

chewbacha 2y ago
When I saw that diagram I laughed. What they are recommending is a complete rework for each cycle!!

jph 2y ago

If you try to build "Simple, Lovable, Complete" then you're likely taking too long to ship. Success with MVP looks like this: "Frank in accounting says he hates it, and thinks it's ugly, but says he'll use it because it saves him ten minutes every day. And he wants to talk with you today about why it sucks so much right now."

fsloth 2y ago
Exactly! You don’t want love, you want users to be compelled to use the product for whatever reason. I don’t love a hammer but it’s a super compelling option when I have some nails…

MissTake 2y ago

I’m working on doing a total replacement of an existing system that’s been in use for a decade. Right now I’m focusing on the logic and internals and have no UI work done. I’ll release a MVP without the UI because the users are very adapt at backend query and would much rather get off the current system than delay waiting for me to do a total front end. That’s our MVP and I’ve total buyin from the business Nothing wrong with MVP when everyone is aware of what that means.

pstoll 2y ago

The classic “big reveal” style of communication - hiding the important thing until half way through. Don’t bury the lede! It confuses and distracts the reader who is looking for how to frame and read everything else. “SLC = simple, lovable, complete. Let me tell you why this is better than MVP.” It ain’t hard, folks.

airstrike 2y ago
It was so annoying that I just skimmed through until I found the bolded terms, realized I disagree with the hot take and closed the tab without further reading. Maybe I'm wrong to do so and missed out on some invaluable piece of advice, but if the message is this boring, confusing and wasteful of the reader's time, maybe that's not on me
- rokkitmensch 2y ago
  You did fine. "Knowing what not to read is the wonder weapon", to repurpose the old joke. Every paragraph without a thesis statement loses another significant fraction of readers.
simonklitj 2y ago
Thank you! Didn’t even bother to read it when it wasn’t immediately clear what SLC means.

riedel 2y ago

A 2017 is missing in the title (guess it matters as this was a total different point in the agile hype cycle) Wonder why this recently pops up recently[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371502

lettergram 2y ago

lol just reinventing the wheel imo — MVP really just means “minimum product people are willing to pay for (and sometimes just use)” It’s correct to say 98% of your target market won’t want to use that product. That said, the 2% that do will help iterate and refine for the remaining folks. To get the initial folks identify the problem and folks willing to work with you. Sure, that’s about it. “Simple, lovable, complete” sounds nice, but that sounds like features. Good luck building a car, word doc, space ship, new drug, etc with that lol those are products, not independent micro-services

jrochkind1 2y ago

If your customers hate it, how can it be viable?

fsloth 2y ago
Because love vs hate is completely wrong way to view the product - unless it’s some pointless fluff. Users can be compelled to use a product because it solves a problem for them, but it may have features and bugs that cause them to hate it. Which is a great signal to invest and fix those bugs. The most negative result from mvp isn’t hate - it’s indifference.

pknerd 2y ago

Did not know MVP meant a "broken" product.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

glimmung 2y ago

This completely fails to address the significance of the word "viable" in MVP - it's only meaningful if we define what it's viable _for_. In a startup it may be "viable to test a hypothesis", in a running business it may be "viable to implement a new workflow". In either case the logic of the MVP approach holds - do the least you need to do to learn what to do next. One could argue that "simple" in their SLC is analogous to "minimal", and "lovable" to "viable".

dumbfounder 2y ago

For successful companies the rules are different. They can’t afford to push out crap to see what sticks because their customers will get pissed. If you have no customers, you need to iterate much more quickly until you find something that can viably get you some customers. Or you can do an SLC as a startup if you are VERY confident you are doing something people will love. That confidence can pay off, but playing the odds it usually doesn’t.

benreesman 2y ago

If I was going to re-brand a great idea with a legitimate tweak in emphasis it would be “dogfooding”: the denotational semantics are almost right, but the term combines the wrong emphasis (force yourself to use something intended for others, almost never a recipe for great work) with a mental picture that is less than appetizing. pg has written about this so extensively and effectively that it would be a waste of any readers time for me to footnote: go read all his essays with an emphasis on the earliest ones if you haven’t: they’re great. I’m not the writer someone like pg is by a long way and so I’m both making the argument less well and don’t have a great alternative proposal, but I bet someone on HN has a good name for this. Instead I’ll share a memorable quote from a world-famous chef that stayed with me: Thomas Keller has two restaurants in Northern California: The French Laundry and Bouchon. He’s quoted as saying that “The French Laundry is where I create meals I like to make, Bouchon is where I make meals I like to eat.” What’s an alternative to “dogfooding” that describes the process of building some simple, lovable, and complete by building something that you yourself prefer to any existing substitute or alternative?

FranklinMaillot 2y ago

1. Define a popular term or process in a very restrictive way. 2. Explain why it doesn't work. 3. Coin your own acronym to describe how most people actually understand the original term. I call this the R3 pattern, for Restrict, Reject, Rename. :)

unraveller 2y ago
1. Find a dead horse 2. Liven it up with feelgood make-up 3. Overhype it to death 4. Glory FLOG pattern FTW.

mock-possum 2y ago

minimum viable product, it’s right there in the name. If you customers hate it, then it’s not really viable, is it? And if they do, but they use it anyway, then mission accomplished… I’m really not down with this article.