I don't mind this strategy, but it requires that you already have a product good enough to get customers—assuming you are actually going to measure things to pl

I don't mind this strategy, but it requires that you already have a product good enough to get customers—assuming you are actually going to measure things to plug into the formula. So, there's a bit of a chicken/egg problem here. The way to solve it is to do great customer development (see Steve Blank et al.) to make sure you are addressing a real problem, and then make the best damn product addressing that problem that you can within a reasonable cost. Maybe your gut/luck is good enough that you don't even need the customer development step. But still, an "MVP"—and I admittedly don't like the term—really can't be 'minimal' to make that formula usable in most cases; you've got to make something good enough to attract and retain users right out of the gate, and that requires taking on some risk.