Is your business idea viable AND valuable?

Video Transcript

For the last 15 years, here we go again. For the last 15 years, the startup world has been totally obsessed with one acronym, MVP. Now, the V in the middle stands for viable minimum viable product. And today, I want to explain why I think viable is not the question we should be asking anymore.

We should be talking about whether we're building valuable minimal products or not. So, let's get into it. The term MVP was originally coined by a guy named Frank Robinson in the early 2000s, and he used it as a way to understand the unique product that maximizes return on risk for both the vendor and the customer. Now, that's a really simple way to say, is this the most viable thing for me to build with my resources and for the customer to use to get their job done?

Then, that was popularized by Eric Ries, who wrote a book called The Lean Startup in 2011. And that's roughly the time that I really started to understand this concept of a minimum viable product. And back then, the important part was to figure out if the thing you were building was viable. Because back then, building things was exceptionally difficult and expensive, especially in the world of product.

And especially if you were trying to build a product to scale. Now, I like to tell people that we don't have to worry about scale if we're building something just to test if it's valid, and if it's viable, and if it's valuable, you don't need to worry about scale. We're not We're not talking about scale. But back in the day, if you were going to go and build something, like when I was building my first startups, you had to figure out if it was viable because you needed to go out and raise money.

You needed to find co-founders. You needed to hire engineers and designers and build infrastructure. And all of this increased your cost to build. And then you had the equation that was financial.

Is the cost to build too much for me to earn back the money with my users by the time I've gone broke? And so the core loop that we're trying to figure out is build, measure, and then learn or iterate. And this is what Eric Reese brought into this equation is it's built on the lean manufacturing concept that Toyota production systems built in post-World War Japan. And this adds to our understanding today of Agile development.

But all of this stuff doesn't take into account AI tools that exist today. And let's just quickly jump back to earlier this year when I believe there was a step-shift change in the tools' ability to do things for people that are non-technical like me. When Anthropic released Claude 4.5 in February of 2026, something changed. These models got better and they are now able to build basically anything that anybody can think of.

All you have to do is know what you want, know how to ask for it, and then spend a few hundred dollars to get it. That equation makes building, in my mind, basically a net zero. It went from hiring engineers, raising funding, building a whole business to spending a couple of hundred dollars prompting an AI to get you something. That's a cost of zero in my head.

So now the question to me shifts from is it viable to build this thing that I have in my head to is it valuable to build this thing I have in my head? And I want us to focus on concept of valuable for a moment. So, if MVP asked, "Can this exist? Will it work?

And is it viable?" the MVAP, the minimum valuable product, asks, "Should this exist? Is this the most valuable thing that I can build for my user? Is this what the user really wants right now? And is this flow, end-to-end journey, the best flow I can put together using the tools at my disposal to show value to the customer?" We're no longer talking about the most viable minimal version of an app.

Because these tools are so good, we should be talking about how do we complete a single user journey for someone in the most valuable way we can. There are even debates in the design world that are now pushing people to build more bells and whistles into their MVAP, or your minimum valuable product, because you can. You can spend maybe two or three weeks building the basic user journey, building the basic flow, and then once you've got one user finishing this off, you can go and build out the valuable product and add the bells and whistles and make the features look and feel quirky and interesting and provide the user with some delight. And I want to be clear, I don't think that minimum valuable products are a diversion from minimum viable products because in Reese's original thinking around an MVP, his definition included validated learning, right?

So, we're going back to validating, but we're validating valuable journey, not just the most viable journey. Because in a world where anything is possible to build, you have to start being a little bit more editorial about the things you choose to spend your time on and the things you choose to offer to your users. One of the things I see when I work with people on my No Program is that they want to solve a lot of problems for people because it's viable to do so. And this is where I think the concept of a minimum valuable product comes in.

If you're a first-time founder, if you're a solo founder, if you're not sure where you're wanting to start, it's easy to want to start everywhere because the tools want you to build more. Replit wants you to use it more often. Claude wants you to build with Claude code because you use more tokens. What we should be doing is slowing down and asking, is this the most valuable thing that I should be building?

And if so, why? And now, I want us to take this concept of the minimum valuable product and expand it out of just the software that we're building or the user journey that we're trying to get done for the user to a broader, expanded definition. So, as we start to include valuable in one of the variables of our definitions of what we should be building and how we should be building stuff, I think we need to ask that same question of more than just the software we're building because in a world where basically anything is viable, whether it's your side hustle, a course you're building, a creative project you want to undergo, a career pivot, it's all viable now. We have agency, we're not trees, we don't have roots, we're able to move, we have the tools at our disposal.

So, everything is viable. Now, we need to start asking ourselves, is this the most valuable way for me to spend the next 2 years of my life building the side project? Is this the most valuable thing to put my experience to use? Is this the most valuable thing I can build with all of the skills that I have at my disposal?

And am I solving the right problem and the most valuable problem for my user or for me? And the truth is, if you've got limited hours in your week, you should be asking not if this thing is viable because it is viable, but if it is valuable to you in your life, to your user in their lives, and if long-term this is going to add value to the way you live, or if it is going to be a net detractor from the things that you choose to do. Viable doesn't always mean valuable, and valuable equally doesn't always mean viable. I want to give you a three-question filter that I want you to apply to everything that you do going forward if it's a side project or a side business.

The first question says the same. Is it viable to build this with your skills? And let me give you a practical example. If you have never built a software business before, if you have never drunk a glass of wine in your life, if you've never bought and sold wine, and if you have no idea of how valuable wine can be in your life to you as an individual, then I have no idea why you would build a wine app for people who drink wine.

It's not actually viable for you to do that because you have no knowledge. There is a knowledge gap. So viable is still the first question you should ask. Sometimes the answer will be no.

Sometimes it won't be viable because you won't have time in your day, you won't have the capacity, the skills, the energy, the wherewithal, who knows. Then the next thing I want you to do is ask, is this valuable to them? Does it solve the user's real problem? Is there a real person that you're thinking of when you trying to solve this problem?

If there isn't, then potentially this idea isn't for you. And then the final thing is, is this valuable to me? If this isn't valuable to you, then why would you want to spend the next 2 years of your life trying to turn a profit into this? You have to have some appeal.

There has to be some value for you other than just monetary in my view, because money only drives you so far when you're running out of time, energy, and capacity in your day. I think that everybody's got an app in them. I think that everybody's got a business in them. I think that everybody has an idea that they want to turn into something that somebody needs to use.

So, I want you to visit nobullshit.co and come and build with me. Starting in July, I've got a new program. I'm going to work with you every week for 8 weeks to turn your idea from something that we know is viable into something that is valuable to a real customer and you can turn into a real business.