This makes me circle back again to the concept of "Minimum Viable Product." It's been said that as a startup, if you're not embarrassed when you ship v1, you waited too late. But what's often not looked at is "just how embarrassed is embarrassed enough?"
Going against the concept of launching an MVP is the idea of "you only get one chance to make a first impression." Which is why a number of founders started talking less about launching Minimum Viable Products, and more about launching Exceptional Viable Products.
Those few extra details can be crucial levers to determining your product's success with customers. Of course, the key is determining which of those key details are the ones you need to pay attention to, and which ones you can pass over for now.
> "you only get one chance to make a first impression."
Yeah this always weighs upon my mind, to the point where sometimes I don't move ("perfect is the enemy of good", you can find a quote from all sides of a situation).
I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of users. These can be internal staff first, friends and family, or the noisy but helpful people who file a load of issues with you for another version/product. I think releasing a MVP to the whole world can be a big mistake, there are so many games out there I can't play them all. Some are fully realised in early access but others get a quick look then I never go back, even years later.
> I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of users.
This. So much this.
MVP has a key role in product development - but its place is not necessarily at the phase of "launch it to the public with a marketing campaign." It comes before that.
Big things are expected and are exactly what you pay for. Neglect them and you'll lose all your business, because you're offering nothing.
But when costumers are comparing two companies (or small business, whatever), it's the small details that will make difference.