Minimum Viable Products, commonly referred to as MVPs, are a cop-out.
MVPs aren’t a problem, technically. But stopping at “viable” is.
MVPs are the fast food of product development: cheap, rushed, often flavorless, and unsatisfying. They fill a gap, but they don’t nourish loyalty. They check a box, but they don’t spark excitement. Most importantly, they don’t make anyone fall in love.
In today’s product landscape, tools like Replit, Lovable, and other AI-assisted builders make spinning up an MVP faster than ever. That’s a good thing. Speed unlocks learning.
But the tradeoff is that these MVPs often feel brittle, unreliable, and disposable. You get somewhere quickly, only to realize you’ll need to rebuild everything to scale, support real users, or earn trust.
MVPs are a necessary step. But they’re no longer sufficient.
In an ecosystem flooded with alternatives and raised expectations, your product needs to do more than work — it needs to wow. You need something people trust, return to, and recommend. Something they love.
Enter Left: MLPs (Most Lovable Products).
They build on the foundation of MVPs but raise the standard from viability to loyalty.
Minimum Viable Products, commonly referred to as MVPs, are a cop-out.
MVPs aren’t a problem, technically. But stopping at “viable” is.
MVPs are the fast food of product development: cheap, rushed, often flavorless, and unsatisfying. They fill a gap, but they don’t nourish loyalty. They check a box, but they don’t spark excitement. Most importantly, they don’t make anyone fall in love.
In today’s product landscape, tools like Replit, Lovable, and other AI-assisted builders make spinning up an MVP faster than ever. That’s a good thing. Speed unlocks learning.
But the tradeoff is that these MVPs often feel brittle, unreliable, and disposable. You get somewhere quickly, only to realize you’ll need to rebuild everything to scale, support real users, or earn trust.
MVPs are a necessary step. But they’re no longer sufficient.
In an ecosystem flooded with alternatives and raised expectations, your product needs to do more than work — it needs to wow. You need something people trust, return to, and recommend. Something they love.
They build on the foundation of MVPs but raise the standard from viability to loyalty.
Users don’t fall in love with “viable.” They don’t stay loyal to “meh, it works most of the time.” In an ecosystem flooded with options, mediocre isn’t good enough.
If you want your product to actually solve problems and make someone’s life easier, you need more than viability or a functioning prototype. You have to make something they’ll love and look forward to using. You need what I have coined as an MLP: Most Lovable Product.
At Mavric, we help product people / entrepreneurs stop churning out forgettable MVPs and start building unforgettable MLPs.
So what makes a product lovable? What transforms a feature list into a fan favorite?Users don’t fall in love with “viable.” They don’t stay loyal to “meh, it works most of the time.” In an ecosystem flooded with options, mediocre isn’t good enough.
If you want your product to actually solve problems and make someone’s life easier, you need more than viability or a functioning prototype. You have to make something they’ll love and look forward to using. You need what we have coined as an MLP: Most Lovable Product.
At Mavric, we help product people / entrepreneurs stop churning out forgettable MVPs and start building unforgettable MLPs.
So what makes a product lovable? What transforms a feature list into a fan favorite?
“Do fewer things, but do them exceptionally well.”
Lovable starts with absolute clarity.
An MLP doesn’t try to be everything to everyone, chasing every shiny feature or trend. It cuts through the noise, zooms in on the core problem, and solves the hell out of it.
One of the biggest mistakes visionary founders make is confusing value with volume. They think more features = more appeal. But in reality, more features end up meaning more confusion.
Too many teams throw half-baked features at the wall hoping something sticks. Those kinds of projects are like the virtual version of a Mr. Potato Head, with lots of parts jammed in the wrong places.
Focus is about doing what matters, and doing it with surgical precision.
MLPs cut the fluff, distractions, and unnecessary bits.
They deliver a specific, sharp value proposition. They say, “We do this. And we do it better than anyone else.” When your product nails its core use case, it becomes indispensable, and people won’t shut up about it.
MLPs hone in with ruthless focus to keep the main thing the main thing.
“Get users to their ‘aha’ moment quickly, intuitively, and repeatedly.”
A digital product has seconds to make someone care.
Users need to “get” your product immediately and understand instantly where the value is. They should understand what your product does, why it matters, and how it helps them succeed. If that isn’t obvious, they’re gone.
The goal is simple: shorten the time it takes for someone to say, “Oh, this is exactly what I needed.”
Developers who make MLPs obsess over the user’s path to value. From the first click to the core outcome, it should feel effortless and intuitive. The speed should be blazing fast, too.
Every extra click, unclear label, or unnecessary step slows users down. That’s a tax on their time and their patience.
Anyone else tired of bloated products that prioritize “beauty” while never delivering real business value?
Your tech should serve the business, not the other way around. If a feature we add to your software doesn’t further your business goals, we’re axing it… no matter how much we adore it.
It’s not about us. It’s about making the user’s life better.
If your product feels like work, they’ll leave. They have plenty of other options.
A great flow to value feels natural, like the product is reading your mind.
At Mavric, we’re determined to get users to the “hell yeah!” moment ASAP.
“If it’s not dependable, it’s not lovable.”
Lovable products work.
They’re predictable and reliable, performing every single time without stutters or any signs of vulnerability.
Trust is built in milliseconds and lost in microseconds.
Your users are entrusting you with their time, data, and outcomes. Break that trust once, and you might not get a second chance. One bug, one lost file, one key feature that doesn’t load when they need it, and that trust erodes fast.
Users rarely notice when everything is working smoothly, but they always notice when it doesn’t. Smooth, seamless functionality is like oxygen: invisible, essential, and only obvious when it’s missing.
When your product flows effortlessly, users don’t stop to praise it. They just keep going.
But the second something goes wrong, that invisible trust cracks. When a screen lags or an error message is confusing, the user gets frustrated. And in a world full of alternatives, frustration is fatal.
Reliability is crucial to widespread adoption. It’s the quiet engine behind great user experiences: not flashy, but foundational.
If a product is not trustworthy, then nothing else matters. Not the design, not the features, not even the innovation. Because when users can’t count on you to work every time, they won’t stick around long enough to care about anything else.
“Your product is a hypothesis. Learn fast.”
The reality is your idea is probably wrong. Or at least, not entirely right. It’s probably incomplete, or maybe it’s naively optimistic.
Because no matter how smart you are or how much research you did, nothing beats real-world usage.
We treat products as living, breathing experiments, and we test them relentlessly. We understand that software evolves, shifts, and gets stronger when we stop trying to be right and start trying to learn fast.
Feedback is a gift: it’s data that provides direction. Every user behavior tells a story:
Feedback only works if you’re listening and willing to act on it. Listen. Learn. Adapt. Repeat.
Applying an MLP culture means embracing humility and caring more about what’s true than what’s planned.
Iterate fast. Kill your darlings. Let usage, not ego, drive decisions.
The difference between a product people tolerate and one they love comes down to how well it adapts to what they actually need.
“Listening is a feature.”
Most companies treat support like a fire extinguisher: only to be smashed open in case of emergency.
We think that’s backwards. We bake support into the product DNA as a core experience. Support is a key form of connection with users where we can build rapport, community, and loyalty.
It’s where developers get to show users:
If feedback is how you learn, support is how you show up. It’s your human touch in a digital world.
MLP support involves actual conversation, empathy, and real-time presence. It’s easy to find, actually helpful, and surprisingly human.
Bad support involves chatbots, ticketing systems, and emotionless AI replies.
Show your users you give a damn by embedding feedback tools where they matter and making help feel helpful, not like a scavenger hunt.
“Lovable products fit seamlessly into the user’s existing world.”
Bluntly put, your product is not the main character in your user’s story.
Users already have a way of doing things. They’ve got tools they trust, workflows they’ve refined, and muscle memory they’ve built over time. If your product forces them to break those, you’ve only created friction.
The most lovable products don’t try to bulldoze over what exists. They don’t demand loyalty by force or require a lifestyle change. Instead, they slip in quietly, amplify what’s already working, and make everything feel better without making anything feel different.
MLPs integrate smoothly with the apps, workflows, and ecosystems your users already rely on.
Effortless integration looks like:
We believe that seamless integration demonstrates to users that we respect their time, tools, and intelligence.
Make your product a natural extension of what’s already working, and users will love it.If feedback is how you learn, support is how you show up. It’s your human touch in a digital world.
“Lovable products communicate clearly, proactively, and transparently at every user interaction.”
Ever been ghosted by an app?
Buttons don’t work. Things disappear. The page becomes unresponsive, and no one tells you why.
It’s infuriating.
MLPs don’t leave users in the dark. They communicate with clarity, honesty, and respect. They tell you what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what’s next. MLPs provide helpful error messages, proactive updates, clear policies, and friendly copy.
These aren’t UX fluff. They’re trust builders.
Here’s how this plays out. Say you’re trying to upload a file, but the upload button suddenly stops and shows:
“Oops. File upload failed—looks like the file type isn’t supported (only .pdf, .docx, .png).”
“Need help? [Chat with support] or [View supported files].”
Why this is great:
What would make it even better is receiving an email 10 minutes later with a follow-up:
“Saw your upload didn’t go through, so we’re checking in. Need help getting that sorted?”
Lovable products speak with users, not at them. Your users want to feel in control and respected.
Respect starts with not BS-ing them.
When something breaks, let users know. When something changes, explain it. When something’s confusing, simplify it.
Because silence is hostile, not neutral. When your product goes quiet, users feel abandoned. But when it speaks with clarity and care, even in failure, it earns trust. And trust is what turns a usable product into a lovable one.
If you want to build a product that users obsess over, recommend, and come back to, build a Most Lovable Product.
Here’s the cheat code again:
1. Ruthless Focus: Sharp scope, zero bloat.
2. Seamless Flow to Value: Make that “aha” moment inevitable.
3. Trust & Reliability: Be the product they count on.
4. Feedback Loop: Learn fast, iterate faster.
5. Solid Support: Show users you’re listening.
6. Effortless Integration: Fit into their world, don’t fight it.
7. Clear Communication: Talk like a human, not a help desk manual.
This is our DNA at Mavric. We call it The Mavric Method.
We partner with visionary founders, product leaders, and teams who are ready to ditch the MVP graveyard and build something that earns love, loyalty, and longevity.
If you’re tired of building good enough, let’s build unforgettable.
Let’s build MLPs.
Want help turning your MVP into a MLP? Let’s talk. We don’t do fluff. We do lovable.
