From MVP to MLP and why "good enough" no longer works

For a long time, the idea of an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) made perfect sense.

When building software was slow, expensive, and technically demanding, shipping anything was an achievement. A product that delivered the minimum functionality needed to solve a problem was often enough. It proved feasibility. It unlocked funding. It showed momentum.

But that world has gone.

As Elena Verna puts it, the MVP era is over - not because experimentation no longer matters, but because building itself is no longer the constraint.

With AI copilots, vibe coding, and an entire ecosystem of low-cost or free infrastructure, the cost of development has collapsed. Auth, databases, deployment, testing... what once took teams and months now takes hours. And we have some standards now (React, iOS/Android etc, design components).

Everyone can ship.

Everyone has an MVP.

And “minimal utility” is no longer a differentiator.

In fact, an MVP today doesn’t prove much at all. It mostly proves that you showed up.

When building is easy, making people care is hard

In a market flooded with alternatives, many of them indistinguishable, functionality alone doesn’t create advantage. Users can switch, clone, or even build their own solution. The bar has moved.

Minimal products now need to feel something. They need taste. They need personality.

If anything, Experience Design has become more important - because it's the differentiator. Those magic moments, apps that are intuitive and ultimately create something truly lovable.

They need clarity, trust and a sense that someone cared about the experience.

That’s why Elena reframes the idea as an MLP: a Minimal Lovable Product. Not lovable in the sense of bells and whistles, but lovable in the human sense. Something that evokes confidence, curiosity, or even a small smile. Sometimes that emotional signal is the only thing left to differentiate - and where people buy.

This is especially true in AI-accelerated markets, where speed has flattened the field. MVPs used to be an external milestone for customers. Now, as one comment neatly put it, they’re often just an internal milestone for when the coding agent finishes something that technically works.

(This is partly why I started the Build Loop. No longer do we need to go through lengthy design sprints and development time, BUT we do need to make decisions and piece together what we're learning for all).

Discovery just got more important

There’s a temptation to interpret this shift as “design polish matters more than discovery,” but I think that’s the wrong conclusion.

If anything, discovery becomes more important in the MLP era, because when anyone can build anything, relevance is the scarce resource. Build-it-and-they-will-come rarely works without early conversations, real context and ongoing testing. Taste isn’t decoration; it’s informed judgment. And guess what - many talk about this but very few that I've experienced follow it.

A product that feels human doesn’t come from guessing what users might like. It comes from understanding their problems deeply enough to make confident, opinionated choices and then expressing those choices clearly through language, interaction and behaviour.

What changes in practice

The shift from MVP to MLP doesn’t mean teams should build more. It means they should build more deliberately.

Instead of asking:

• “What’s the minimum we can ship?”

We’re increasingly asking:

• “What’s the minimum that makes someone care?”
• “What signal are we sending about trust, quality, or intent?”
• “What would make this feel considered, not just functional?”

That’s a higher bar, but it’s also a more honest one.

Building into the Build Loop

This shift has been quietly influencing how I think about product work for a while. Seeing it articulated so clearly has crystallised it for me.

I’m now replacing MVP with MLP in the Build Loop playbook.

Not because learning no longer matters (it does!), but because learning that doesn’t translate into something people care about is no longer enough. In a world where building is easy, the real work is still discovery, judgment, and taste.

When everyone can ship, the products that win are the ones that feel intentional.