Ask HN: War stories on implementations of Eric Ries' MVP ?

[marcamillion]

This post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=891467 - really piqued my interest, because I have been thinking about running an experiment like this on a number of ideas I have floating around in my head.

But, at the risk of sounding dumb, even though I love Eric Ries' talks, it all seems too complicated. I understand what he is saying, and I understand the concepts, but I would love to hear some real live testimonials of HNers that have actually implemented any of these tests and their results.

This question is actually inspired by this comment - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=891517

So one and all, bring yee stories hither forth and shareth with thee.

Thanks :)

[jmathes]

I worked at a software company where we should have run an experiment like this. There's an upgrade on user accounts that we charged a one-time $10 for, and people buy it all the time. We decided to try it as a subscription.

We spent a month getting the subscription code ready, then deployed it to some % of users, only to discover that nobody wanted it. What we should have done was build the front-end only, get people to buy subscriptions, and then just grant them the one-time permanent version.