The MVP myth is destroying good products

After building dozens of SaaS MVPs for clients over the past few years, I've reached a controversial conclusion: the whole "ship an MVP and iterate" mentality is actually ruining more products than it's helping. I know this goes against everything you hear in startup circles, but hear me out. Every client comes to me with the same request: "We need an MVP, something basic we can launch in 6-8 weeks, then we'll add features based on user feedback." Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Here's what actually happens 90% of the time: The client launches their bare-bones MVP. Users try it once, maybe twice, then bounce because it doesn't actually solve their problem completely. The client panics, thinking they need more users or better marketing. They never get the chance to iterate because nobody sticks around long enough to give meaningful feedback. Meanwhile, their competitors who took 6 months to build something that actually works are eating their lunch. The real problem? Most people misunderstand what MVP actually means. They think it's "build the smallest thing possible." It's not. It's "build the smallest thing that delivers COMPLETE value for a specific use case." Big difference. I've seen clients lose months of runway because they launched a task management app that couldn't handle file attachments, or an analytics dashboard that couldn't export data. These aren't "nice to have" features - they're deal-breakers disguised as iterations. The worst part? When I suggest taking an extra month to build these core features, clients push back because some guru told them "speed to market beats perfection." But there's nothing speedy about launching something that immediately gets ignored. Here's what I've learned building MVPs that actually succeed: Your MVP should feel complete within its scope, even if that scope is narrow. A great email tool that only does newsletters is better than a mediocre tool that tries to do everything poorly. Users don't care about your iteration timeline. They care about whether your product solves their problem today. If it doesn't, they won't come back to check if you've improved it. The feedback you get from an incomplete product is usually garbage. People will tell you what's missing, not whether they'd actually pay for it if those things existed. Look, I'm not advocating for waterfall development or spending years building in stealth. But this obsession with shipping incomplete products as fast as possible is just as destructive. The companies that win aren't necessarily the fastest to market, they're the ones that ship something people actually want to keep using. Sometimes that means saying no to clients who want to launch before their product is ready. Sometimes it means pushing back on timelines. But it always means focusing on delivering real value instead of just checking the "we launched" box. The irony? When you take time to build something solid upfront, you actually iterate faster later because you have engaged users giving you real feedback instead of explaining why they left after five minutes. Maybe it's time we stopped treating "MVP" like it means "unfinished product" and started building things that are genuinely minimum but still viable. Rant over.