Why Most MVPs Fail at Launch

The term MVP has been misunderstood into meaninglessness.

What it was supposed to mean: the smallest experiment to test your riskiest assumption.

What founders think it means: a rough first version of my grand vision.

This confusion kills more startups than bad code ever will.

The Pattern I See Constantly

Founder has an idea. Founder assumes they understand the problem. Founder builds for three to six months. Founder launches. Nobody cares.

Then comes the rationalization: bad timing, wrong market, needed more features.

Rarely do they consider the real issue - they built something nobody asked for.

The Actual Problem

Most MVPs fail because founders skip discovery.

Discovery is uncomfortable. Building feels productive. You can measure lines of code, screens designed, features shipped. Progress is visible.

Talking to strangers who might reject your idea? That's terrifying. There's no metric for "had an awkward conversation that challenged my assumptions."

So founders skip it. They substitute assumptions for evidence and call it vision.

What Works Instead

Talk to people before you build anything

Fifteen to twenty real conversations. Not surveys, not feedback forms - actual discussions where you shut up and listen.

Don't pitch your solution. Ask about their problems. Understand their current workflows, the hacky workarounds they've built, the frustrations they've accepted as normal.

You're looking for patterns. When five different people describe the same pain point unprompted, you're onto something.

Ship something small and watch what happens

Your first release isn't a product. It's a listening tool.

Ignore what users say they'll do. Watch what they actually do. There's a canyon between stated preferences and revealed behavior.

Where do they spend time? What do they ignore? What do they use in ways you didn't anticipate?

Follow the signal

This is where most founders mess up. They see unexpected user behavior and try to correct it. They funnel users back toward the "intended" experience.

That's backwards.

Unexpected behavior is data. Sometimes it's noise. But sometimes it's the most important signal you'll get - users showing you what they actually need.

How This Played Out for Us

We built a prototype called Yapper. Simple concept: transcribe and organize any audio recording. Voice memos, meeting notes, random ideas, whatever.

General purpose. Flexible. We had assumptions about how people would use it.

Then we watched early testers.

They kept using it for one specific thing - reciting recipes while they cooked. Not meetings. Not brainstorms. Recipes.

We didn't plan for that. Our roadmap had nothing about cooking. But the signal was clear.

Instead of forcing our original vision, we followed the behavior. That insight became the foundation of Dishcourse. The Audio to Recipe feature isn't a nice-to-have we added later. It's the core of the product because real users showed us that's what they wanted.

We built around validated behavior, not assumptions.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Discovery requires admitting you might be wrong.

Your beautiful vision might not match reality. The problem you're solving might not be a real problem. The solution you've imagined might not be the solution people need.

That's hard to accept when you've been dreaming about this idea for months.

But a failed conversation costs you an afternoon. A failed product costs you a year.

Your MVP isn't a mini version of your grand vision. It's an experiment designed to test whether your assumptions hold up against reality.

Ship small. Watch closely. Follow the signal.