Good stuff. Congrats to the founders on the pivot and the success. Getting the MVP approach right is hard. Really hard. Either that, or I have just been doing

Good stuff. Congrats to the founders on the pivot and the success. Getting the MVP approach right is hard. Really hard. Either that, or I have just been doing it wrong. We have one line of business that is our bread and butter. It came up the old fashioned way: getting in the trenches, gutting it out, and tweaking the model until we gained traction. Since then, we have launched no less than 3 new businesses. Two were shutdown and one is currently languishing. The challenge is marketing. It's hard, there is too much noise, and when the product is not refined, conversions can suffer. So, it can be difficult to discern whether your company is failing because of the minimal product (especially in these days of "high design"), because of some other execution element, or just no market fit. I also think the MVP approach is suitable to businesses with specific characteristics and these may be relatively rare. In this case, the business already had fairly extensive relationships with its target market on both sides of the equation. That was key, I believe, as much of the marketing legwork had been done and the established trust could override any qualms about such a minimalist approach. Also, the nature of the business was such that simple forms and manual processes were sufficient to start. That is frequently not the case with tech businesses. This is not to disparage their accomplishments in the slightest. It was an astute pivot and their approach was smart. It's just that the mantra of MVP, fast iterations, fail fast, etc. has been the magic hammer lately, and too many companies have been nails.