Minimum Vital Probe
Mark Pincus on why the fastest route to a winning idea is a failure machine:
Too many teams waste time getting to a minimum viable product that they can put out in the market and we don't have time anymore for that. We need a failure machine at the top of the funnel. We need to get to a minimum idea state that gets vibe coded.[...]
The worst thing people can say is meh. No is better.
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Don't build it right. Build it wrong and build it fast, and don't make it viable. Viable is the bad word. Let's take viable off the table because it's probably wrong. So, we don't have time to build viable. Let's build wrong and see if it proves right. Then let's build right.
For a while we spoke of minimum desirable products, but even that feels like it fails the test. The feedback loop is too long, the time to signal isn't sustainable.
I think the actual solution Mark is hinting at is somewhere between an arcade attract mode - the looping demo that catches your eye in a room of amusement abundance and sensory overload and persuades you to put a coin in the slot - and a culturematic chaos container.
It's something that can test the laws of attraction and earn follow-on attention.
It's no longer a product, it's a probe. And it's no longer viable, but it is vital.