For more than a decade, Minimum Viable Product has dominated how product teams think about new ideas. MVP became the default for startups, founders, and even internal innovation teams: build something tiny, ship it early, validate quickly, iterate relentlessly.
On paper, it makes perfect sense. However, in practice… we’ve stretched “minimum” to a breaking point.
Somewhere along the way, MVP became an excuse to launch half-working demos disguised as products. Teams optimized for speed, not usefulness. Users got the short end of the stick — expected to test unfinished tools, provide feedback, and patiently wait while we “iterate.”
The industry’s obsession with MVP has delivered countless prototypes, but far fewer products people really want to use.
Thankfully, MVP isn’t the only way. And in many cases, it’s not even the best way.
On my readings through the immense web, I’v stumbled upon a better, more user-centered approach: SLC — Simple, Lovable, Complete.
Originally proposed by Jason Cohen, SLC redefines what “minimum” should really mean.
Viable Minimums? Or Are We Just Lowering Expectations?
Let’s give MVP its fair share of praises.
The MVP framework was designed to maximize validated learning as quickly as possible. And that’s valuable — especially when you’re exploring a foggy problem. Interviews are helpful, but watching a user click through a real interface reveals truths no survey ever will.
The issue isn’t the theory. The issue is how MVP has been culturally interpreted.
Reid Hoffman famously advised founders to “launch early enough that you’re embarrassed by your v1.0 release.” Startups - and even larger corporations - took that to heart. Too much, actually.
The result? As Jason Cohen puts it,
MVPs are too M and rarely V. Customers see that — and hate it.
“Minimum” became “bare bones.”
“Viable” became “barely functional.”
And users became unpaid QA testers.
As a hands-on engineer and product builder, I’ve seen this firsthand. After launching MVP-styled features, real users would often come back saying: “This is interesting, but for it to be useful, it would need to do X”. That “X” was always something essential — something that should have been part of a complete first experience, not left for later iteration.
Yes, MVP still has a place — especially for proving unclear concepts or validating if a radical idea has any future at all. But for most modern software teams, especially when the user problem is well understood, MVP often leads to:
- high initial curiosity
- underwhelmed first impressions
- poor retention
- avoidable churn
We shouldn’t build products to impress stakeholders with speed. We must build products because users have problems that deserve real solutions.
This is where SLC changes the conversation.
SLC: Simple, Lovable, Complete
A more user-centered approach to product design
SLC is a mindset shift. Instead of asking:
➡️ What’s the minimum we can build to test this?
It asks:
➡️ What’s the simplest, complete product our users could actually love?
Where MVP optimizes for what we learn, SLC optimizes for what they experience.
Let’s break it down.
Simple
SLC doesn’t advocate for bigger releases. It advocates for cleaner, sharper focus.
By that, Simple means:
- A narrow problem
- A tight scope
- A product that’s instantly understandable
- Features that work without friction or cognitive load
Simplicity is not about fewer features — it’s about fewer concepts.
A simple SLC product feels like it was made by a team that deeply understands what matters and intentionally excluded everything that doesn’t.
Lovable
Here we’re getting to the essence of the problem, the real differentiator.
Instead of scrambling to ship a minimally functional set of screens, SLC pushes teams to create something a core group of users will love, talk about, and stick with.
“Lovable” doesn’t require fancy animations or pixel-perfect UI. It requires:
- An experience that feels thought-through
- UX decisions that reflect real empathy
- A workflow that solves the painful part completely
- A product that feels trustworthy, not experimental
Instead of seeing users as co-developers, SLC treats them as recipients of value from day one — not beta testers.
Complete
Here’s where SLC rejects the typical MVP shortcuts.
Complete does not mean feature-rich. It means:
- No broken flows
- No “coming soon” placeholders
- No dead ends or obvious gaps
- A fully working, end-to-end value loop
- Everything included in the scope is polished and reliable
Users shouldn’t have to imagine what the product could become. They should feel the value immediately and be eager to continue using it.
“Complete” basically means that the limited scope we chose is delivered fully, thoughtfully, and without friction.
This alone massively increases adoption and retention because users trust what feels consistent and reliable — even if it’s small.
A Better, User-Centered Approach to Building Products
SLC doesn’t guarantee success. No framework can. Only hard work, intuition and some sprinkles of luck.
But as Jason Cohen notes, SLC gives teams better odds and better options. If a SLC launch fails, you still learned something meaningful — and you didn’t burn your first users with a half-baked product.
If it succeeds, you’ve already delivered real value. Now you can:
- build a v2 based on what actual users — not early testers — want
- take your time making thoughtful decisions
- or decide the product is good enough as-is, without chasing endless feature expansion
Not every product needs to become a ever-growing platform. Some things should remain simple, lovable, and complete — forever.
That being said, from my perspective, SLC shines when:
- the user problem is clear
- the market is understood
- the team has a strong product vision
- and the goal is to build something users will adopt immediately, not “eventually”
By focusing on simplicity, completeness, and emotional bonding, teams avoid building scaffolds of hypothetical features and instead deliver something that feels real from day one.
Final Thoughts
MVP is not a bad idea, far from it. It’s just been misused, misinterpreted, and over-applied.
SLC reminds us of something the MVP era made us forget:
Users deserve products, not prototypes.
They want solutions, not experiments.
And when teams aim for simple, complete, lovable experiences, they create products people talk about proudly, not patiently tolerate.
It’s time to rethink our obsession with “minimum” and instead invest in the smallest product users can love — not the smallest product we can ship.