The MVP Trap: When Minimum Becomes Maximum

We’ve built MVPs for 50+ startups. Most succeed. Some don’t. The failures share common patterns.

Pattern 1: The feature creep spiral

It starts innocently. “Just one more feature before launch.” Then another. Then another.

Six months later, you’re still pre-launch with a bloated product nobody’s tested.

The fix: Define your hypothesis in one sentence. Build only what tests it.

// Hypothesis examples

Bad:  "Users want a better project management tool"
Good: "Freelancers will pay €10/month to track time and invoice clients in one click"

Pattern 2: Architecture astronautics

Kubernetes for 100 users. Microservices before product-market fit. Event sourcing for a todo app.

Premature optimization isn’t just about code. It’s about architecture too.

The fix: Start with a monolith. Extract services when you know you need them—not when you think you might.

Pattern 3: The solo founder death march

“I’ll hire once we have traction.” Meanwhile, the founder burns out building everything alone.

Technical founders especially fall into this trap. Delegating feels slower than doing.

The fix: Your first hire should be earlier than comfortable. The right person pays for themselves in velocity.

Pattern 4: Building in isolation

Three months of heads-down development. Launch day arrives. Users bounce immediately.

You built what you imagined, not what they needed.

The fix: Ship something in week two. Ugly is fine. Wrong is information.

Pattern 5: Perfectionism as procrastination

That pixel-perfect design system. Those comprehensive test suites. That beautiful CI/CD pipeline.

All excellent. All irrelevant if you run out of runway.

The fix: Ask one question: “Does this help us learn faster?” If not, defer it.

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The best MVPs we’ve seen share one trait: relentless focus on the core value proposition. Everything else is noise until proven otherwise.