The term minimum viable product — or MVP — is widely used in startup and product development conversations, but its meaning is frequently misunderstood. Many founders interpret it as meaning a cut-down or unfinished version of their intended product, when in practice it refers to something more specific and more strategically important to how early-stage businesses test and learn.
A minimum viable product is the simplest version of a product or service that delivers enough value to attract early customers and generate useful feedback. The emphasis is on learning — an MVP is not a permanent product; it is a structured test of your core assumptions about what customers need and are willing to pay for. It allows founders to validate key hypotheses with real users before committing to the time and cost of building a complete product.
What constitutes a viable MVP differs significantly between product types, markets, and business models — there is no single correct format. A service business MVP may simply be a manual version of something you later intend to automate. Our guides to product validation and early-stage business development explore MVP approaches that work for different types of UK founders and ventures.