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How do you personally pick between "minimum" and "viable" when deciding to launch?

It feels like a tough needle to thread.

I've made mistakes both launching too early with something that makes people go "eh, cool I guess", and building feature after feature and never pushing it out the door.

Curious to see how you all think through this and what your collective experiences have been.

Pete Marcano
@marcano

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Tom Connole
@tomcnle

This isn't a particularly an answer to your question, more just a moment I had yesterday listening to a podcast.

Matt Mullenweg when talking about the first version of Wordpress said:

"It was true it didn't so much [compared to] other software. But it was better in a way that mattered".

I liked this sentiment.

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Pete Marcano
@marcano

That's actually a decent answer and really good framing of the issue.

Spend more time how you are positioning the product and once you're different enough and it solves the new problem, ship.

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Rich Taylor
@flyinghacker

I’m about to launch my first product Pete so I hear you on this one! I don’t want to ship something that’s clearly below par when compared to similar apps but I also don’t want to fiddle around for months on stuff that doesn’t matter! 😫

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I don't think it's a choice between "minimum" and "viable", rather it's figuring out what the least you can ship that will still give you valuable feedback.

Typically your product will be a better alternative to an existing solution. So then "minimum viable" just means it's (slightly) better than the alternative.

If you're talking about polish, etc that's a different story. And depends on your market, who your early adopters are, and what your relationship with them is. Typically a polished design helps establish credibility, but there's many other ways to do as well.

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