Why Your MVP Should Be Smaller Than You Think

When I speak to startup founders about their Minimum Viable Product, I often hear the same thing.
They describe a product that sounds suspiciously like their version one.

It’s polished, full of features, and ambitious in scope.

The trouble is, that’s not an MVP. vvThat’s a full product; and it’s one of the quickest ways to burn time, budget, and energy before you know if anyone even wants what you’re building.

I’ve worked with dozens of early-stage startups through my consultancy, More Than Monkeys, and I’ve been in the trenches building my own products too.
In every case, the most successful launches came from teams who fought to keep their MVP ruthlessly small. The worst examples come from teams who try to build everything they think the users might want.

Here’s why your MVP should almost certainly be smaller than the one in your head, and how to figure out what really needs to be in it.

The Myth of the “Minimum” in MVP

MVP gets thrown around so much it’s lost its meaning.
The “minimum” bit is rarely taken seriously. Founders imagine they need enough features to satisfy every possible user in their target market from day one.

In reality, the goal of an MVP is to learn.

It’s the smallest possible thing you can put in the hands of real users to test a specific assumption about your product or market.

If you’re building a product for tradespeople to manage their jobs, your MVP isn’t a polished mobile app with invoicing, scheduling, client messaging, and analytics.
It might just be a basic job tracking tool with one or two key workflows that let you see if tradespeople will even use a digital system at all.

Anything more is nice to have; but “nice to have” is the enemy of speed.

Case Study: Yepic

At Yepic, we launched an app for tradespeople. The idea was to replace the paper job sheets they’d been using for years with a mobile-friendly workflow.

The temptation was to launch with everything: quoting, invoicing, client comms, material ordering, payment integration. We cut it right back to one thing:

Allow users to log jobs at the job site and automatically track the time spent on them.

That single feature let us see if tradespeople would actually record their work digitally, on-site, instead of waiting until later or relying on paper.
They did.
Within weeks we had tradespeople logging hundreds of jobs a day.

Because the MVP was tiny, we could ship it in weeks, not months. And because it was live so fast, we could iterate based on actual behaviour, not what we guessed they’d want.

Why Founders Overbuild

I get why founders struggle to cut down scope.
It feels like showing an incomplete product is risky.
There’s a fear that users won’t take you seriously unless the product looks “done”.

In practice, the opposite is true.
Early adopters don’t expect polish. They expect speed, responsiveness, and a willingness to listen.
They want to feel part of shaping the product.

Overbuilding delays that moment.
By the time you finally launch, you’ve sunk months of effort into features that might never be used, and you’ve missed chances to course-correct early.

The 3-Question Filter

Here’s how I help founders work out what belongs in an MVP:

Does it directly test a core assumption?
If the feature doesn’t validate (or invalidate) something critical, cut it.
Can it be replaced with a manual process for now?
Many things can. At Yepic, we manually generated job reports for early users. It wasn’t scalable, but it proved whether they wanted job reportsat all.
Would the product still be usable without it?
If yes, it’s a post-MVP feature.

Run every feature request through that filter. You’ll be surprised how little remains.

Resist the Urge to “Just Add One More”

Founders often tell me, “We’re ready to launch… we just need to add X.”
That “just one more thing” loop can go on forever.

If you are still struggling to pick your MVP scope, here’s a trick: set a launch date before you finalise your feature list.
Ship whatever is working by that date, and log the rest as version two.
If you’ve chosen your MVP scope well, you’ll still learn everything you need.

Smaller MVPs Mean Faster Feedback

The smaller your MVP, the quicker you can:

Get real users
Measure real usage
Decide what’s next

At Cricket Allrounder, our first release was so barebones we were slightly embarrassed. But within a month, thousands of players had signed up, and we had hard data showing which features mattered most. That shaped every sprint afterwards.

Your MVP Isn’t Your Legacy

It’s easy to think the MVP is a reflection of your vision.
It’s not. It’s a test rig, a way to learn whether or not you should spend more money.
It exists to answer the question: “Are we on the right track?”

The real product comes later, informed by what you learn.
The faster you can get those learnings, the less you’ll waste building the wrong thing.

The Payoff

Cutting scope is uncomfortable, but it pays off:

Faster to market, and faster to learn
Lower costs, both financial and emotional
Less risk, fewer assumptions baked into the product
More agility, easier to pivot when needed

If your MVP feels too small, you’re probably close to the right size.
And if you can launch it in weeks instead of months, you’re giving yourself the single biggest advantage a startup can have: the ability to learn faster than everyone else.

Gary Worthington is a software engineer, delivery consultant, and agile coach who helps teams move fast, learn faster, and scale when it matters. He writes about modern engineering, product thinking, and helping teams ship things that matter.

Through his consultancy, More Than Monkeys, Gary helps startups and scaleups improve how they build software — from tech strategy and agile delivery to product validation and team development.

Visit morethanmonkeys.co.uk to learn how we can help you build better, faster.

Follow Gary on LinkedIn for practical insights into engineering leadership, agile delivery, and team performance