What is an example of minimum viable product?

Dropbox's demo video: Before building the full product, they posted a video of how it would work — to test demand first.

Where do you see minimum viable product in everyday life?

Dropbox's demo video; Zappos' first 'store'; A waitlist landing page; A concierge MVP; One feature, not fifty.

Before building the full thing, ship the smallest version that lets real people respond — a landing page, a manual prototype, one feature.

Curated by Paulo de Vries · reviewed 2026-05-30

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the smallest thing you can ship to test your biggest assumption — then build, measure, learn. Examples:

Dropbox's demo video
Before building the full product, they posted a video of how it would work — to test demand first.
Zappos' first 'store'
The founder photographed shoes in local stores and listed them online to test whether people would buy shoes online at all.
A waitlist landing page
Put up a page and see whether anyone wants the thing before you build it.
A concierge MVP
Do the service manually behind the scenes before automating anything.
One feature, not fifty
Ship the single core feature to learn fast, instead of polishing a huge product no one asked for.

Before building the full thing, ship the smallest version that lets real people respond — a landing page, a manual prototype, one feature.
Define the riskiest assumption first and design the cheapest test that could prove it wrong.
Resist polishing in private; releasing something rough to real users teaches you more in a week than months of planning.

That's just how memory works. Lock minimum viable product in with a 5-minute active-recall session — spaced repetition, no signup.

One tap adds it to your review queue — we bring it back right before you'd forget.