I think this post is confusing two stages of development. I would argue that MDP is a step beyond and MVP. MVP is not about marketing, word of mouth, promotion

I think this post is confusing two stages of development. I would argue that MDP is a step beyond and MVP. MVP is not about marketing, word of mouth, promotion (although it's always welcome). MVP is about building the absolute minimum you can test against your target market to validate your assumptions. I just finished a Lean Startup Machine weekend. You know what our team's MVP was? Us walking the streets of London, approaching our target market, explaining our offering and completing the service we were promoting (it wasn't a virtual goods or saas obviously!). That's right, we didn't write one line of code! But we went through the exact motions that we would have done if a website existed i.e. attracting interest, taking details, fulfilling the service and receiving payment.