When most people think about launching a company, they imagine the glossy version of the product. The sleek app. The polished brand. The flawless execution. But the truth? The companies we admire today didn’t start out that way. They began with scrappy, imperfect Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
And that’s exactly what you should do too.
Airbnb: A WordPress Site and Air Mattresses
Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia weren’t engineers. They were designers who couldn’t pay rent. When a design conference came to San Francisco, they bought a few air mattresses, built a basic WordPress site, and rented out their living room.
No marketplace. No payments platform. No global community.
That little experiment, their MVP, proved a crazy idea: people would actually pay to sleep in a stranger’s home. It gave them the validation (and eventually the confidence of investors) to build something bigger. Today, Airbnb is worth billions.
But it started with three airbeds and a hacked-together website.
ClassPass: A Google Sheet That Changed Fitness
Payal Kadakia loved dance, but she hated how complicated it was to find and book classes. She wasn’t a coder, so she launched her first “product” as a Google Sheet with class listings and Eventbrite links.
It was messy. Manual. Definitely not scalable.
But it worked. Users loved the idea of flexible access to classes. That tiny MVP gave her proof to raise money, bring in engineers, and build the platform that eventually became ClassPass, used by millions around the world.
The MVP didn’t look anything like the end product, and it didn’t have to.
Bumble: One Twist That Flipped the Market
Whitney Wolfe Herd wasn’t a developer either. What she had was insight. Dating apps all worked the same way until she flipped the script: on Bumble, only women could send the first message.
The MVP wasn’t loaded with features. It was essentially Tinder with one important difference. But that difference resonated. It made headlines, attracted users, and created a brand identity strong enough to take Bumble public.
The MVP’s power wasn’t in code, it was in the idea.
Pinterest: Clunky Tech, Loyal Users
When Ben Silbermann launched Pinterest, it was far from perfect. The site was buggy, slow, and invitation-only. But he didn’t wait until it was flawless.
Instead, he focused on building loyalty. He personally emailed new users. He even mailed handwritten notes to early adopters.
That MVP might not have scaled well, but it proved one thing: people loved the concept of visual bookmarking. The validation was enough to attract engineers, investors, and eventually millions of users worldwide.
The Lesson: Don’t Wait for Perfect
- You don’t need to be technical to start.
- You don’t need all the features.
- You don’t need perfection.
You need an MVP. Something small enough to launch quickly, test the market, and learn. Something that helps you discover if people actually want what you’re building.
From there, you iterate. You add features, refine the experience, and scale when the data and your users show you it’s worth it.