Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with an exciting opportunity: build a two-sided marketplace platform. The budget was substantial, the technical challenge was interesting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date.
I said no.
Not because I couldn't deliver it, but because they were asking the wrong question entirely. They wanted to know if their idea would work, but they were planning to spend months building before getting any real user feedback. That's not testing – that's gambling.
Here's what most founders miss: a truly "lovable" MVP isn't about building the perfect product. It's about building the perfect learning experience. The difference between these two approaches can save you months of development time and thousands of dollars.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why "lovable" beats "viable" every single time
The framework I use to validate ideas in days, not months
Real examples of MVPs that succeeded because they focused on emotion first
How to identify what makes YOUR product lovable before you build anything
The validation process that could save your next project from failure
Ready to build something people actually want? Let's dive into what makes an MVP truly lovable.
Industry Reality
What every startup founder thinks they know about MVPs
Walk into any startup accelerator, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like a mantra: "Build an MVP. Get it to market fast. Iterate based on feedback." The industry has turned MVP development into a mechanical process – a checkbox exercise where "minimum" and "viable" become the entire focus.
Here's what the conventional wisdom tells you to do:
Strip features to the bare minimum – Remove everything that's not absolutely essential
Build the simplest version possible – Focus on technical viability over user experience
Launch quickly to test the market – Speed to market is everything
Gather data and iterate – Let analytics guide your next moves
Scale based on metrics – Growth numbers prove product-market fit
This approach exists because it's measurable, logical, and feels safe. Investors love it because they can track progress through clear milestones. Developers love it because it's systematic. The problem? It optimizes for building something people can use, not something people will love.
The traditional MVP mindset treats users like lab rats in an experiment. You're measuring clicks, conversions, and retention rates, but you're missing the most important metric: emotional connection. When you focus solely on "minimum" and "viable," you often end up with products that work perfectly but inspire nobody.
That's where the concept of "lovable" changes everything. Instead of asking "What's the least we can build?" you start asking "What's the smallest thing we can build that people will genuinely care about?"
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client I mentioned in the intro came to me excited about the no-code revolution and new AI tools. They'd heard these tools could build anything quickly and cheaply. They weren't wrong – technically, you can build a complex platform with these tools pretty fast these days.
But their core statement revealed the fundamental problem: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, no proof of demand. Just an idea and enthusiasm. They wanted to spend three months building a sophisticated two-sided marketplace to "test" whether people would use it.
I'd seen this movie before. In my experience working with startups, the ones that succeed don't start by building. They start by falling in love with a problem, not a solution. And more importantly, they make sure other people are just as passionate about that problem.
So instead of taking their money and building what they asked for, I challenged them with a different approach. I told them something that initially shocked them: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build – not three months."
This wasn't about being lazy or cutting corners. It was about understanding what "lovable" really means. A lovable MVP isn't about features or functionality – it's about solving a problem so elegantly that people can't imagine going back to the old way of doing things.
The breakthrough moment came when I shifted their focus from "Will people use our platform?" to "Are people already trying to solve this problem in painful, manual ways?" That's when we discovered they didn't need to build anything to test their core hypothesis.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the framework I walked them through, and what I now use with every client who wants to build something "lovable" rather than just "viable."
The One-Day MVP Approach
Instead of building their platform, I suggested they start with the simplest possible test:
Day 1: Create a simple landing page or Notion doc explaining the value proposition. Not the features, not the technology – just the transformation you're promising. "We help X achieve Y by doing Z differently."
Week 1: Start manual outreach to potential users on both sides of the marketplace. Don't sell them a product; sell them a solution to their current pain.
Week 2-4: Manually match supply and demand via email, WhatsApp, or whatever works. Become the platform yourself. Yes, it doesn't scale, but you're not trying to scale yet – you're trying to learn.
Month 2: Only after proving demand and understanding the real workflow, consider building automation.
The Lovability Test
Throughout this process, I taught them to watch for what I call "lovability signals" – behaviors that indicate emotional connection, not just functional satisfaction:
Unprompted sharing – Do people tell others about your solution without being asked?
Manual workarounds – Are users creating their own processes to make your solution work better?
Resistance to alternatives – When you suggest other tools, do they explain why yours is different?
Feature requests that surprise you – Are users asking for things you didn't think of?
The key insight: Your MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product. Distribution and validation come before development, always.
When they started manually connecting buyers and sellers, something magical happened. Users began describing the experience as "finally, someone who gets it." That emotional response – that's what makes an MVP lovable. It's not about the interface or the features; it's about the feeling that someone understands your problem deeply enough to solve it in a way that feels effortless.
Manual Validation
Test demand before building anything. Manual processes reveal real user workflows better than assumptions.
Emotion Over Function
Focus on how users feel, not just what they can do. Lovable products create emotional connections first.
Problem-Solution Fit
Ensure you're solving a problem people are already trying to solve. The best MVPs feel inevitable.
Distribution First
Your MVP should test your ability to reach and convert users, not just your product functionality.
The client followed this approach, and within 30 days they had their answer. Not from analytics or conversion rates, but from user behavior. People weren't just using their manual matching service – they were recommending it to colleagues and asking when they could get more features.
More importantly, they discovered their original platform idea was only half right. The real value wasn't in the marketplace interface they wanted to build. It was in the curation and matching process they were doing manually. Users loved having someone who understood their industry make intelligent connections for them.
This validation phase cost them maybe $500 in tools and time, versus the $15,000+ they would have spent building the wrong thing. But the real victory was emotional: they now had a group of users who were genuinely excited about what they were building, not just tolerating it.
Six months later, when they finally did build their platform, they had a waiting list of engaged users and a clear understanding of what features actually mattered. The result? A product that people described as "exactly what we needed" rather than "technically impressive."
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience reinforced several key principles I now share with every client considering an MVP:
Lovable beats viable every time – Users forgive bugs, but they don't forgive irrelevance
Manual processes reveal truth – What you learn doing things manually is more valuable than any user research
Emotion predicts retention – If users aren't excited about your MVP, they won't stick around for your full product
Distribution is part of the product – If you can't reach users with an MVP, you can't reach them with a full product
Constraints spark creativity – The most innovative solutions come from doing more with less, not less with more
Speed to learning beats speed to market – It's better to understand your users deeply than to launch quickly
Problems > Solutions – Fall in love with problems, not solutions. Solutions change, but deep problems endure
The biggest shift for most founders is realizing that a lovable MVP isn't about building less – it's about caring more. More about user problems, more about emotional connections, more about creating something that feels inevitable rather than impressive.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, making your MVP lovable means:
Start with manual processes to understand user workflows
Focus on one specific use case that creates emotional impact
Test your ability to reach and engage users before building features
Measure excitement and sharing, not just usage metrics
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, lovable MVPs require:
Curated product selection that solves specific customer problems
Personal touch in customer service and product recommendations
Focus on the buying experience, not just the browsing experience
Build community around your products, not just transactions