Might seem like a braindead point, but the website doesn’t actually state what MVP stands for. For sales and marketing, MVP might mean Most Valuable Player. For most developers, MVP means minimally viable product. Unfortunate name collision that could completely shift the tone of this article...
While the OP's account is a few years old, they have zero comments and zero submissions until this one, a blatant blogspam advertisement for their startup.
If your product is super abstract or requires research and new tech, that’s even more reason to test the waters first and make sure there’s a market you can sell to before embarking on months or years of work.
> Maybe this fits for some types of businesses, but I suspect it's probably better just to build the thing.
9 out of 10 wantepreneurs that approach me with their SaaS/app idea can validate the offering by building a web site. Instead, everyone wants me to spend months on building a prototype. Which isn't even a prototype, they want full-blown product. "How am I going to sell it when there's no product?!". Dude, here's a landing page with ALL the features YOU THINK people want listed on it. And here's a "Buy now!" button. If you can't get a decent conversion with that, I'm not going to build your app ever. And guess what? Most of the time nobody clicks on the button, because nobody wants that product.
Gather their contact info at least, saying "We're launching our product soon. We'll notify you when it's available!". Those who actually leave their email probably have a strong interest and could be your early adopters. They might even be up to discussing their needs with you if they haven't found a product that solves their issue yet.
The trouble I see with that is if I'm a consumer and find this buy now button and instead of letting me buy now you ask me to join a mailing list I'm not going to be happy. When you eventually launch the product I'm going to remember you as the guys with the website with the weird mailing list dark pattern and avoid buying from you. That said I may be atypical.
I don't know much about consumer, but many enterprise services will only let you book a sales call even when they already have a product. That's annoying, but seems like people go with it.
If it's still super abstract, you're likely pre-MVP. If you're investing time in R&D, you should know what you _want_ to accomplish, even if you don't necessarily know how to get there yet.
Some products need to be tangible for a user to perceive the benefit. Likely everyone can name at least one product that sounds stupid but is actually great. You need to _experience_ them to _get it_.
In the end this is still all product-market fit. In most cases communicating the solution is enough. In rare cases demonstrating it is necessary. But it's likely good advice for your average tinkerer who believes their idea is the next big thing.
