Inspiration carries me along. :) ... and writing up these conversations with Manolo is not something I can put on a calendar. It hits me and I have to sit down and write. Make yourself a coffee, but don't drink it while you read — you're going to laugh (and learn about MVPs).
Monday. 09:00. My office door swings open as if Manolo had just won Go Talent — and no, that's not it... He's carrying a coffee and his laptop with Lovable open, because he's made "something" with AI that he wants to show me
—Jose, we need to ship an MVP of this.
—SPM.... and the week's off to a strong start. (SPM does not stand for "Senior Product Manager")
Manolo talks about MVPs like it's a magic wand. As if by uttering those three letters, product problems dissolved like a sugar cube in coffee.
—The idea is simple —says Manolo—: "We ship something fast and cheap, put it on the market and then iterate."
—Perfect.
—Yes?
—Yes. Perfect if you want to throw away time and money at startup speed.
Manolo gives me a weird, uncomfortable look... The "but every podcast says this" face makes its appearance.
What Manolo doesn't understand is that MVP doesn't mean "cheap product" — it means "well-designed experiment".
So I toss him the first hand grenade to see if I can solve this the quick way and get on with my job:
—What hypothesis do you want to validate?
—That people want to use our platform more. —That's not a hypothesis, Manolo. That's a wish with a budget.
That's when I try to explain (yes, "try") that an MVP exists to refute the riskiest part of the business, not to scratch the itch of playing product manager for a day — we all come up with killer product ideas in the shower.
—If there's no hypothesis, no success metric, no date to decide whether this lives or dies… you don't have an MVP. You have an expensive excuse to feel busy, Manolo.
And I love the guy...
—Come on, man, let's just build something simple and be done —Manolo insists.
—Simple like what? —A quick prototype.
—That's a prototype, not an MVP.
—Then we launch to a handful of users.
—That's a pilot, not an MVP.
—Manolo, repeat after me: Em-vee-pee, pro-to-type, PI-lot
—Write this down:
Prototype: learn fast about a design/flow. Pilot: test a real operation. * MVP: find out whether something is worth building at all.
—Fine… but what do we cut? —asks Manolo.
—You cut features, not brain matter. MVP is not a synonym for "shoddy". You trim scope — not security, not minimum quality, not telemetry.
—Telemetry... What are you on about, Jose Luis? What is that?
—Manolo.... If you can't measure, you can't learn; if you don't define when the MVP goes in the bin, you can't decide; and if you don't have a hypothesis, we're just playing around...
So let's open up the strategic napkin (a real one, not Notion), take an example, turn a product you want to build with AI (of course) into a fix for client reporting at marketing agencies with an MVP — grab pen and paper, Manolo!
(Manolo points at the computer, in case he's allowed to open Lovable...)
Hypothesis: "10–50 person agencies would pay us €99/month if we save them 3 hours a week on reporting." Success metric: over 25% trial conversion and we have payments within 4 weeks. Method: manual MVP ("Concierge" style). (Yes, Manolo, WE ARE NOT GOING TO WRITE CODE) Kill criteria: if fewer than 10% convert, we do something else.
And there it is — Manolo makes the face of someone who's just bitten into a lemon. The no-Figma part hurt him... I can tell.
—Man… that's not very sexy.
—No, Manolo. Because MVPs aren't sexy. They're surgical. If your MVP comes out pretty, you're probably doing too much. And if you learn nothing… it probably never was an MVP.
What Manolo wanted: a "cheap" product and an excuse to raise another round inside his "future" unicorn.
What he needed: an experiment with a single clear hypothesis, a defined metric, and the guts to kill it if it doesn't work.
Three weeks later. Monday. 09:00 again. The face is no longer excitement… it's a hunting face.
—Man… this is the Product Manager's fault.
—Ah… we've reached that part of the movie.
What didn't work wasn't "the MVP" — it's that there was nothing to validate beyond your blind faith, Manolo. But of course, it's easier to blame the PM than to admit you had no hypothesis.
—The Product Manager (PM) should have stopped me.
—Stopped you? Every time they say "I'm not sold on this", you tell them "don't be so negative".
—Well… at least they could have pulled it off anyway.
—Sure. And while we're at it, have them fix inflation too — hell, the price of a beer is through the roof.
A PM is not a Jedi. They can't save you from your own entrepreneurial ego. Or from the dark side. They can't "stop" something you had already decided to do without a strategy. If you don't give them ownership, you can't demand miracles — and you only grant "ownership" when they do what you want.
Otherwise, no.
And that's it for today...
In a little while I'm off to TRG, its tenth anniversary. Looking forward to seeing David Bonilla Fuertes Juan Carlos Vez Vázquez , Ángel J. Ramos and more friends.
You know it's ugly to ask, but it's uglier to stop writing for lack of motivation.
LinkedIn offers plenty of options :) repost, like, comment, and then the ultimate weapon:
Sharing this with your contacts by private message.
And if you do it in WhatsApp groups, I'll give you a standing ovation.
And if you've made it this far, you clearly liked it....