I take it these are things you choose to elect and not things you are saying someone should cut. What can and cannot be cut from an MVP/first version is going t

I take it these are things you choose to elect and not things you are saying someone should cut. What can and cannot be cut from an MVP/first version is going to depend greatly on the type of product you are launching in general. Using your list here are my opinions on each item: 1. Testing - in depth testing can be reduced greatly, but at least some minimal testing should be conducted. Especially if you have users signing up, taking user input, or processing payments. 2. Security - again, this one is going to vary greatly on what the product is exactly. 3. All but barest bone features - goes for any MVP 4. Backups - backups are cheap and easy to setup. No reason you can't do at least a minimal back of your data. 5. Monitoring - simple and basic setup, even using something like PagerDuty or Pingdom. 6. An attractive user interface - agree with you here. 7. Paid offerings - I used to be a strong believer in launch free plans to start and add paid offerings later. But if your eventual business model is to offer paid plans then you should start with something from the get go. Setting up Stripe is simple and you can be up and running within a day. 8. User documentation - cut away and add later. A FAQ section is not frequently asked questions if you don't have any users frequently asking questions :) So to answer your question, what I am willing to cut, or how much of something I willing to cut, all depends on the specific project.