Minimum Viable Product: Definition and Strategy

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You can never wait for the whole of Rome to be built before people start living in it. It’s a very popular statement I mentioned in places I have worked. 

In the heart of Lagos in 2020, 2 years after my first job as a Product Manager working for an IT firm, a young female entrepreneur had a big idea: create an e-commerce app for on-demand home services, most especially around food stuff and livestock. She imagined it all — a polished app, a booking dashboard, integrated payments, live location tracking. 

She had one goal: wanting all at the same time. Which, of course, I had no issue with, but I sat her down and said to her – Can we build this e-commerce app incrementally? Can we build a basic form to allow people to request first, and then later we can start to add a payment gateway to make online payments? Luckily, she agreed. So, we scrapped the big launch and created a basic landing page instead, in a very simple form. We created a form that simply asked:

 “Need fresh groceries or seafood delivered? Tell us what you need and drop your number, and we’ll call you!

That was it!

No mobile app, no login, no payment gateway. But within 1 month, over 50 requests poured into convertible sales.

That basic form helped us validate the business idea, understand demand, and prepare a roadmap before we started scaling the e-commerce platform.

That was her MVP — her Minimum Viable Product. That launch sparked the beginning of a multi-million naira startup.

So, What Is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

A Minimum Viable Product is the most basic version of your product that still solves a real user problem and delivers enough value to start learning from users.

It’s not a prototype or a sketch — it’s real, usable, and serves as the foundation for testing your assumptions.

Imagine you want to launch a food delivery app for African dishes. You envision search filters, cart, order tracking, rider location, mobile payments, restaurant reviews, and more.
But instead of building all that, your MVP strategy looks like this:

For two months, you process 5-15 orders per week. People are engaging, sharing feedback, and asking for options like breakfast and subscription meals. Now, when you approach a developer or investor, you have customer data and validation.

Can you take a step back and look at what we have just done in 2 months?

We didn’t launch with an app!
We launched with the truth: real demand!

That’s MVP magic.

In product language, it’s about focusing on one core function, releasing early, observing user behaviour, and evolving based on feedback, not perfection.

Why Does MVP Matter?

In this current world of fast competition and unpredictable markets, building a full product before learning from users is a luxury most startups cannot afford.

Here’s why MVP is your best ally:

• Speed to Market: Build and ship something useful quickly.
• User Feedback Comes Early: You hear from real users while it still counts.
• Investor Confidence: You show traction, not theory.
• Product-Market Fit Discovery: MVPs reveal real needs, not imagined problems.

The Strategy to Build an MVP

• Identify the Core Problem
  What user problem are you solving? Be specific.
  “Busy parents want daily meals delivered by noon.”

• Define Success Metrics
  What does early traction look like?
  “30 orders in the first week.” or “50% of signups return next week.”

• Design the Leanest Solution
  Remove every non-core feature. Focus only on the must-haves.
  “Can we solve this using just a Google Form and a delivery person?”

• Build & Launch
  ‍Use tools like Notion, Google Forms, WhatsApp, or no-code platforms to go live fast.

• Measure and Learn
  Ask users:  What did you like?  What confused you?  What would make you use our products again?

The MVP Mindset:

Your MVP should answer critical questions:

• Do users even want this?
• Will they pay?
• Are they coming back?
• What feature excites them the most?

MVP is your lab. It’s where you experiment, gather truth and build products that truly matter.

The real win isn’t in launching something fast — it’s in launching something that gives value.

Build something people care about — even if it’s small. From that tiny spark, you can grow a fire.