MVP vs MLP: How to Pick the Right Launch Strategy

Every founder faces the same question before shipping: how much should we build before letting anyone in?

Two frameworks try to answer it. The Minimum Viable Product and the Minimum Lovable Product. They look similar on the surface - both are about shipping small - but they point at completely different problems. Picking the wrong one for your situation is one of the more expensive mistakes you can make early on.

Where these ideas came from

The term MVP was coined in 2001 by Frank Robinson, CEO of SyncDev, who described it as the product that "maximizes return on risk for both the vendor and the customer." Eric Ries then popularized it through the Lean Startup movement, and for a decade it became the default playbook: ship rough, learn fast, iterate.

But somewhere along the way founders started using "MVP" as cover for shipping broken things. Users got tired of being beta testers.

That reaction is where MLP came in. Brian de Haaff of Aha! introduced the term in 2013. His argument was simple: a product people tolerate is not the same as a product they reach for.

What MVP actually means

An MVP is a stripped-down version of a product built to test one hypothesis with real users. Not "let's ship something and see." One specific hypothesis.

The clearest example is Drew Houston with Dropbox in 2008. Instead of building cloud sync infrastructure, he recorded a four-minute demo video showing how the product would work. The waitlist jumped from a few thousand to 75,000 overnight. No working product. Just a demand test.

Airbnb was even rougher. Chesky and Gebbia rented out three air mattresses for $80 each during a design conference in San Francisco. A site, some mattresses, breakfast included. They were not building a hospitality platform - they were checking whether strangers would pay to sleep on a stranger's floor.

"Viable" means the smallest thing that produces a real signal. Signal says yes, you build. Signal says no, you pivot before the costs pile up.

What MLP brings to the table

An MLP is a small first version that people genuinely enjoy using. Not "works fine" - actually enjoy.

De Haaff had a sharp way of putting it: you could eat cat food if you really had to, but you are unlikely to be clamoring for a second serving. Most MVPs are the cat food version of a product. They work. Nobody wants seconds.

An MLP cuts scope just as ruthlessly as an MVP. But the savings get reinvested into what ships. Copy is production-ready. Onboarding feels considered. Every surviving feature gets the full treatment instead of being left half-finished.

The actual comparison

The underlying difference: MVP asks "will anyone use this?" MLP asks "will the people who try it come back and stay?"

When MVP makes sense

MVP is the right call when your biggest unknown is demand. If you are not sure anyone wants the thing, the fastest way to find out is to put a rough version in front of real people and watch what happens. Polish slows down the answer here.

MVP wins in these situations:

• Untested markets where you cannot name a single competitor
• B2B tools and internal pilots, where buyers tolerate rough edges if the workflow saves time
• Short runway, where shipping in six weeks vs six months is the difference between learning and dying
• Concierge or Wizard of Oz services, where the back end is humans doing the work manually

One warning attached: do not ship rough into a market where users already expect polish. A consumer photo app launching in 2025 against established players cannot get away with a half-finished onboarding. The bar has been set by someone else, and an MVP that ignores that reads as broken, not scrappy.

When MLP wins

MLP wins when demand is already validated. You know people want a better email client or a better issue tracker. The question is whether they will love yours enough to switch and stay.

Superhuman is the textbook case. Rahul Vohra spent a year on user interviews before writing much product code, then three more years building before public launch. He personally onboarded early users in two-hour sessions. When the product-market fit score sat at 22%, the team did not ship harder - they went back to survey data and doubled down on speed and keyboard shortcuts. Within a year the score hit 58%. Email already existed. The bet was that craft would pull the right users across.

Linear tells the same story from a different angle. By 2025 the company had 15,000 paying customers and a $1.25B valuation on almost no marketing spend, mostly through word of mouth from people who found the product unusually well-built. When management at some companies tried to consolidate onto incumbent tools, the teams using Linear revolted. That kind of loyalty comes from MLP discipline applied from day one.

How to actually choose

Before committing to either approach, four questions help:

1. What is the bigger risk - demand or retention? Demand risk points to MVP. Retention risk points to MLP.
2. Has a competitor already set a high quality bar? If yes, shipping rough will read as broken.
3. How much runway do you have? Under six months forces MVP whether you like it or not.
4. Can you name your earliest user and what they currently use? If no, go talk to people before picking either approach.

One more honest check: teams sometimes pick MLP because they are afraid of negative feedback on a rough product. And sometimes pick MVP because they do not want to invest in design. Both are bad reasons. Pick the approach that matches what you are actually testing.

If you want to go deeper on this - the full breakdown with more examples and a decision framework is here: MVP vs MLP: Which Launch Strategy Fits Your Product