The most minimalistic MVP possible

Any enterprise background product developer is bound to get exited when they hear about the concept of the minimal viable product for the first time. It can cut the waterfallish 3 months of development to a few week iterations. But what is the smallest amount of time possible to develop a product?

I was equally blown away with the idea to develop an MVP in 24 hours. This idea seemed crazy. Having developed all kinds of different apps without being able to attract customers the 24 hour MVP is now a must. In fact how about instead of 24 hours it's actually 5 minutes?

The point of the instant MVP is that you're testing the waters for interest. This concept is not new. Test project used to collect emails to see how much traction they got off the bat and then decide if the project was worth pursuing. But this is pretty much taking the Viable out of the product, right?

It's true. If there is no functionality in your product then there is no viable to speak of, but what you're testing for is wording and what sounds good enough to people that they would sign up. Better yet, if they would pay up front for it. Monetary transaction is the ultimate test.

But how the hell do you get one of these instant MVP's online? Well you need two things and design is not one of them: a domain and convincing content.

The domain will help you be perceived as a legit business. It doesn't cost much anyway. And convincing content is not amazing images or expensive design - it's a conversation. If you can write a letter to your potential customer in a way that feels like a natural conversation and convince them your product is what they need - you've got the deal. Design and effects only add 10%, sometimes take away the same amount.

I couldn't find a service I was satisfied with so I just built my own - it's easy to use and ridiculously fast to set up. You may find HTML coding a better suit if you know how to set up servers and code. Or maybe check out some of the crazy predesigned options like Upsite. In any case - don't waste time on a product not worth pursuing again!