16 best minimum viable product examples

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest version of a product, designed to validate a business idea and gather feedback from early users. Startups rely on MVPs to test their core assumptions with minimal investment, avoiding the costly mistake of building full-featured products that nobody wants.

By launching an MVP, founders reduce the risk of failure, accelerate development cycles, and determine what users actually value before committing to a full build.

Here are some of the best MVP examples from companies that are now household names:

• Dropbox validated demand with just a 3-minute explainer video before product development.
• Airbnb founders tested their concept by renting out air mattresses in their own apartment.
• Zappos proved people would buy shoes online by manually photographing inventory at local stores and fulfilling orders one by one.
• Groupon started as a WordPress blog where the founders manually generated PDF coupons and emailed them.
• Uber launched with just three black cars in San Francisco, dispatching rides manually via SMS.

These examples demonstrate that you simply need the courage to take action by starting small, learning fast, and iterating based on real users’ feedback.

1. Dropbox explainer video MVP

Dropbox founder Drew Houston demonstrated a low-cost MVP by creating an explainer video to test the market. He explained the minimum viable product in essence, showing how the tool would function across various devices.

While the footage featured only a working prototype of the software, this approach led to hundreds of thousands of people joining the waitlist overnight.

By using this “smoke test” strategy, the team proved that their product actually has a market demand before investing years into the complex backend engineering.

2. Airbnb’s initial home listing MVP

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia started with simple MVP development by creating a website, offering three air mattresses in their living room with breakfast and a personal city tour included. They photographed their space, handled bookings manually, and hosted the guests themselves.

All three spots filled. This scrappy experiment revealed that travelers were willing to stay in a stranger’s home for an authentic, affordable experience. If you want to test a similar business model, learn how to make a booking website to validate local demand before investing in custom development.

3. Zappos manual fulfillment MVP

Nick Swinmurn, the founder of Zappos, wanted to test if people would buy shoes online without trying them on. He went to local shoe stores, took photos of the inventory, and posted them on a simple website. When he got an order, he would buy the shoes at the store and ship them manually.

This process showed how someone can sell online without the risk of buying expensive inventory upfront. It proved that customer service and convenience were more important to users than the technology itself.

4.  Buffer’s landing-page-as-product mockup MVP

Buffer started as a two-page website. The first page explained the value proposition, and the second collected email addresses from interested users. Later, they added a pricing page to see if people would actually pay.

This process validated user intent before development starts. By confirming that users were willing to pay, they avoided building a product no one valued. Furthermore, the list of early sign-ups fueled their email marketing strategy, making it easier to reach potential clients.

Buffer’s MVP is proof that creating a landing page is a simple yet effective way to test if your product concept resonates with your target audience. This helps you avoid spending months coding a dashboard that users find confusing or unnecessary.

5. Amazon’s book-only MVP

Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1995, selling just books, as they were easy to ship, hard to break, and had a universal demand. This focus allowed Amazon to refine its supply chain and customer service systems.

Once the model was proven, they expanded to other categories. It’s a classic lesson for anyone looking into starting an online store – focus on a specific niche to master the logistics, then expand your catalog.

6. Foursquare check-in MVP

Foursquare launched with a single primary feature that allows users to “check in” to locations and earn badges. They stripped away maps, complex reviews, and reservations to focus entirely on gamification.

This focus served as an effective application prototype, proving that users enjoyed sharing their location competitively. By isolating the single most interesting feature, they quickly captured a dedicated user base.

7. Spotify desktop-only MVP

Before dominating mobile, Spotify launched a desktop-only application in selected European countries. Their primary goal was to demonstrate that streaming could be fast and buffer-free, which was the biggest pain point for music listeners at the time.

By restricting the initial release to desktop and specific regions, they could control costs and server load while validating that users preferred legal streaming over piracy. This staged approach helped them grow to hundreds of millions of users today.

8. DoorDash’s food-on-demand concierge MVPs

Before becoming the giant it is today, DoorDash started as a simple concierge MVP. The founders created a basic landing page called paloaltodelivery.com, listed a few local restaurant menus, and personally handled everything behind the scenes.

Customers would place an order on the website or over the phone, and the founders themselves would call the restaurant, pick up the food, and deliver it to their doorstep.

This scrappy “concierge MVP” proved that people were willing to pay for hyper-local delivery long before any routing algorithms, driver networks, or logistics software existed. It validated demand at almost zero cost, and only then did DoorDash invest in building the real platform.

9. CardMunch’s Wizard-of-Oz MVP

In a “Wizard of Oz” MVP, the user thinks they are interacting with an automated system, but a human is doing the work behind the scenes. The original version of CardMunch, for example, was launched in 2009 and presented itself as an AI-powered business card scanner.

Users would snap a photo of a business card with their iPhone. Within a few minutes, the contact information would appear perfectly formatted in their address book. Behind the scenes, each photo was sent to workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk who manually typed out every name, phone number, and email address.

This validated the critical assumption that professionals would trust a mobile app to digitize their business cards and found the convenience worth a short wait. LinkedIn then acquired CardMunch for $2.4 million in 2011, once the demand justified building real OCR technology.

10. UberCab SMS-based MVP

The original version of Uber, called UberCab, didn’t have a map-based app. Starting in 2009, users in San Francisco requested rides via SMS, and the founders dispatched drivers manually from a fleet of just three black cars.

This low-tech solution validated the critical assumption that people wanted on-demand luxury car service and were willing to pay for it through a stored credit card. It solved the problem of hailing a cab without requiring a complex GPS infrastructure initially.

11. Groupon PDF newsletter MVP

Groupon began as a side project called “The Point.” To test the daily deal concept, they only used a basic WordPress blog. When someone bought a deal, the team would manually generate a PDF coupon and email it to them.

This scrappy approach successfully helped them build an email list and prove the business model without creating a complex coupon redemption system. It confirmed that collective buying power was a strong motivator for local commerce.

12. AngelList job board MVP

AngelList began as a curated email introduction service between startups and angel investors. The founders manually matched parties to see if the connections provided value.

Once the network effect became apparent, they decided to build an online job board and fundraising platform to automate the process. This ensured they were automating a behavior that already existed naturally.

13. Etsy’s craft-seller MVP

Etsy’s founders observed that eBay was charging high fees and wasn’t tailored for handmade crafts. So, they built a simple platform specifically for crafters, launching it just as a casual forum.

By focusing strictly on this niche, they confirmed market fit immediately rather than trying to compete with general marketplaces. This proves that an MVP often succeeds by doing one thing better than the competition, rather than trying to solve everything at once.

14. Twitch’s Justin.tv single-stream MVP

Twitch initially started as Justin.tv – a single channel broadcasting the life of founder Justin Kan. He began streaming his entire day via a webcam attached to his baseball cap, coining the term “lifecasting.”

This experiment was unusual but garnered significant media attention, with appearances on major news outlets. It revealed that people loved the live, unedited interaction.

After about eight months, they opened the platform to the public in October 2007, and eventually noticed that gaming streams were the most popular. This insight led them to spin off the gaming category into the Twitch we know today.

15. Instagram’s Burbn pivot MVP

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger originally spent a year building Burbn, an HTML5 check-in app for users to make plans, earn points, and share photos. After securing funding, they analyzed user behavior and noticed people primarily engaged with just the photo feature.

They made a bold decision to scrap the majority of their product features after a year of work and rebuild from scratch in just eight weeks. The new app, Instagram, focused solely on photo sharing, comments, and likes. Following its launch in 2010, it reached 1 million users within a month.

16. Facebook’s college-only MVP

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start with an idea for a global social media network. The original “Thefacebook” was exclusively for Harvard University students – a digital version of the physical “face books” colleges distributed.

Within days of building the site, Zuckerberg had 1,500 users. After a month, half of Harvard’s students had accounts. The platform then expanded methodically to other Ivy League schools, all universities in North America, and finally opened to the worldwide public in September 2006.

This staged rollout approach allowed Facebook to refine the product with a contained audience and scale infrastructure gradually. By constraining the initial market, Facebook created intense demand and exclusivity that fueled its explosive growth.

Next step: Validate your minimum viable product

After launching your MVP, ensure that you validate whether your business idea actually solves a problem for real people by:

• Talking to users (qualitative feedback). Reach out to your early customers directly and ask open-ended questions, such as “What problem were you trying to solve?” or “What almost made you quit?” Additionally, you can use tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity to observe how users navigate your product and identify where they get stuck.
• Tracking what matters (quantitative metrics). Focus on actionable metrics, not vanity numbers. Monitor the retention rate (do users come back?), conversion rate (how many visitors sign up or make a purchase?), customer acquisition cost (what you spend to win a customer), and lifetime value (total revenue per customer). Use Google Analytics to track these basics.
• Learning and deciding. Based on your data, decide whether to continue if users are returning and paying, iterate if the problem is real but your solution needs refinement, or pivot if nobody is interested.

Be honest with yourself. It’s better to pivot early than waste years building something nobody wants. Good luck!

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