Top 10 Inspiring Minimum Viable Product Examples in 2024: From History to Growth

Are you familiar with the following image found across the internet?  What has this to do with MVP?

The image above by Henrik Kniberg depicts the MVP approach. Yes! you read it right, it's interpreted as each means of transport representing the Minimum Viable Product update. So, first, it starts as a simple skateboard—usable enough for the real users to move from point A to point B.

As the development evolves it gets turned into a scooter, bicycle, and ultimately a motorcycle, each stage adds more value and enhances core functionality that is based on user suggestions. Eventually, at last the user receives a fully functional car, a product that they expected and are totally satisfied with. Now, This method differs from the traditional method of building individual components without a feedback loop and unaware of user reaction. So, do you think the Minimum Viable Product approach will always work?

In this blog, we’ll explore ten software prototypes that have either made a powerful impact or provided valuable lessons on what to avoid. The following listicles show how the right Minimum marketable product can pave the way for success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, developer, or product manager, this blog is all you need to gain insights into launching effectively and maintaining momentum. Ready to learn from the pros?

Successful Minimum Viable Product Examples

Let's explore the top 10 minimum viable product examples to get a better understanding of the mvp concept. These successful MVPs are now the most widely used platform. Get to know how all of it began from the early stages and turned into successful minimum viable product examples with minimal effort

1. Notion

What makes Notion the great mvp example in the world of digital marketplaces? Due credits to its flexibility and customization. If you are looking for a complete tool for both work and personal needs to help you streamline and organize tasks the Notion is the best choice.

Started as an all-in-one platform for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, what still attracts a loyal user base is its proficiency in meeting diverse needs. 

MVP Plan

Nation's founders, Ivan Zhao, and Simon Last, aimed to create a tool that would allow non-techies to customize tools without code. Notion's MVP was like a blank canvas where you could write down ideas, create to-do lists, and organize information.

It focused on the essentials like note-taking, task management, and basic database features. Advanced features like templates, integrations, and complex databases were not yet made available.

The goal of deploying MVP software was to gather customer feedback and understand if the idea of a flexible tool for various purposes was relatable to initial users. Notion wanted to see if users were excited about the potential of a customizable workspace. The core features of their Minimum Viable Product planning included:

• Targeting just the core components for users like craters, designers, and developers, initially. This set of users tends to have an adaptable workflow that demands an adaptable too. So, by relying on these core users, Notion could refine its features based on specific, high-value feedback.
• Instead of offering a lot of different features right away, Notion focused on being simple by providing prominent features for taking notes and creating basic databases. This helped early users easily figure out what worked best for them with Notion.

Business Growth

In 2016 Notion's MVP was rolled out as a early version packed with features powerful enough to create a strong impact on its early adopters. The early users were a small group of people who continuously explored the nook and cranny of the platform and gave feedback that refashioned its growth.

• Team Notion was well aware of their early adopter's feedback. They keenly observed the user's suggestions and implemented appropriate changes quickly. This approach helps them analyze prime features that would excite the larger group of audience.
• The Strategy of the Notion set the stage for the product's success. Yes, the team was smart enough to build a strong community around the product. Now this stable community is a space where the team engages their users by asking them to share their workflows, their unique methods of using Notion to handle daily tasks, etc.

Organic Growth and Scalability:

When we say simplicity and flexibility to be crucial it is not to be misinterpreted that the platform offered only the basic essential features. As more people started using the platform more features like tool collaboration, and advanced databases, are being included. Still, the app continues to be synonymous with simplicity and flexibility. This is possible as each addition was made in response to user needs. Notion doesn't overwhelm its users with more complex features.

Adaptability Across User Bases:

Notion’s Minimum Viable Product was a game-changer, crafted for both solo users to entire teams who are after seamless scaling. Zeroing in on core users, keeping specialties sleek and simple, and setting up an engaging community, transformed Notion into a versatile, must-have workspace tool that evolves with the digital world.

2. Slack

Although not brand new, Slack continues to iterate on its MVP by testing new features with limited user groups before full-scale implementation. Guess what kept them successful in the competitive market for so long? Its their focus on refining user experience based on feedback.

MVP Plan

There was this online game, Glitch. It proved to be a failure but it had a side project. This side project was to address one of the major drawbacks of the online game, ie ineffective communication. Therefore, to improve this drawback the team developed a simple internal tool. Originally the tool was designed to replace emails and provide an easy way to share updates and collaborate, this eventually evolved into Slack.

Key features of Slack’s MVP Planning:

The team identified email communication to be their core problem as it proved to be ineffective for real-time team collaboration. They sought to create a suitable platform to address these limitations.

The MVP contained basic essential features like channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and search functionality. These were crucial for improving team communication.

Business Growth 

In August 2013 Slack kicked off its MVP followed by an exclusive closed beta, hand-picking 8,000 companies to test it out. They collect essential feedback and fine-tune the build using this insider approach before opening the doors to everyone.

3. Loom

Known for asynchronous video communication, Loom released a simplified version of its product focused solely on video messaging to test user engagement. This Minimum Viable Product approach has helped them tailor the key feature that a user really needs.

MVP Plan

Text communication was often at the tortoise phase and the video meetings seemed a nightmare for the founders of Loom, Joe Thomas, Shahid Khan, and Vinay Hiremath. So,after analyzing the market demands they thought of creating a tool that permits users to quickly record and share videos to explain things, give feedback, or share updates. So, they literally aimed to put a full stop to long meetings due to slow communication.

Key MVP Features:

• Users can make the best use of Screen and Webcam Recording to make detailed demo videos or video explanations.
• No more waiting for big file uploads. Users get to experience Instant Sharing via a link after recording, videos.
• Loom was designed for potential users to feel easy to use. A quick and simple way to share videos with little effort.

Business Growth

Launched in 2016 as a Chrome extension, Loom made things easy for users. Especially it met the communication needs of tech and remote working people. They were allowed to record videos right from the browser.

How do you think Loom amassed a loyal user base even without complicated software? Team Loom was keen on user feedback and made continuous improvement based on their early adopter’s valid suggestions.

4. Miro

A popular online whiteboard tool among remote teams for brainstorming and collaboration. Miro had a unique way of planning and growing its Minimum Viable Product:

MVP Plan

There was high demand for a tool that could bring traditional office whiteboards into the digital landscape. Especially since it was much needed by remote workers. Having rightly sensed the need, Andrey Khusid and Oleg Shardin, aimed to create a digital whiteboard that multiple people could operate simultaneously.

Core MVP Features:

• No matter where you are Miro allows real-time collaboration. A perfect pick for brainstorming and teamwork. 
• Simple Interface that imitates the appearance of a whiteboard but comes along with enthralling digital features.
• The MVP had Basic Tools like sticky notes, drawing tools, and other essentials for users to map out ideas and workflows.

Business Growth

Miro refined their build based on early user feedback. Their dependency on user inputs and their way of prioritizing user preferences made them too more appealing. Miro grew quickly through word of mouth. Yes! The teams within companies started recommending it to their co-workers.

They used a freemium model to offer basic features for free while charging a few Benjamin Franklins for advanced options. This Wise strategy made the tool easy to adopt and try.

5. Figma

We all know how Google Docs works for Text. Figma is something similar. It is a design tool that allows real-time collaboration. Even Figma’s recent update included features personalized for design systems and cross-team collaboration. Prior to broader deployment, this update was initially tested with design-focused startups. Let's find out how Figma planned, launched, and grew its MVP:

MVP Plan

There was a need for real-time collaboration tools for designers in the industry. And, most of the tools like Adobe, Illustrator, and Sketch, are desktop-based and don't allow multiple users to access them. This considerable gap in the design industry caught the eye of Dylan Field. Creating a cloud-based design tool that allowed multiple designers to work together effortlessly became Feild’s ultimate goal. So, the MVP was built around a few core principles:

• Unlike traditional tools Figma's MVP focused on Real-Time Collaboration. It enabled multiple designers to work on the same file simultaneously.
• Designed as a cloud-based platform, figma allowed users to access it from anywhere as it was built as a web application.
• Essential Vector Graphics Editing tools for any design work were made available for the early adopters in the MVP product development.

Business Growth

Launched in 2015 after three years of further development, Figma targeted those in the designer community who were frustrated with the existing tools. Those set of users were the early adopters of Figma's MVP. The MVP was an invite-only but was potent to create a buzz and gather valuable feedback.

Based on the early users' shared feedback Figma enhanced its collaborative features and improved the performance. As the MVP solved a real problem of early users it managed to fetch high user engagement and a loyal userbase.

Thus, the word of mouth of its loyal user base was a powerful market that skyrocketed Figma's growth. They offered a freemium model with basic features for free of charge. Users can explore the tool and then upgrade to paid plans as their needs increase, promising Figma a sustainable revenue stream.

6. Airtable

Airtable's MVP strategy is quite easy to guess. It focuses on integrating with other tools and testing their user interactions. Get to know how Howie Liu, its Founder Planned, launched, and maximized their MVP.

MVP Plan

Though technical databases were powerful they were too technical for most of the users. On the other hand, spreadsheets were easy to use but not powerful enough to handle complex data management. Having rightly hit on this, Howie Liu developed a tool that combined the ease of spreadsheets and retained the power of a database, letting users build their own apps without the need for coding.

The MVP was created with a few core principles:

• Spreadsheet Interface made it easily accessible even for non-technical users. Users can simply input data in a grid format. They gave early users the ease of handling by retaining the spreadsheet interface.
• Database Power allows users to create relationships between different sets of data. This is possible with powerful database features like relational linking.
• Customization allows users to tailor their “bases” (Airtable’s term for databases) to suit their use cases like project management, inventory tracking, etc.

Business Growth

Launched in 2012 Airtable MVP targeted non-technical users who were not ok with traditional databases at the same time needed something more than spreadsheets to manage their day-to-day tasks. So, by precisely pitching it to the exact group of early users and the flexibility of the tool made it much popular among different industries, for various tasks.

Similar to Miro and Figma, Airtable's popularity was through word of mouth. As more people started to understand its proficiency of letting users handle complex team workflow seamlessly, they spread the word with others. This led to its popularity and success.

7. ClickUp

ClickUp regularly introduces new features in MVP to gather user feedback and improve the essential features before releasing the full version.

MVP Plan

In the productivity world teams were using too many tools to handle their projects. This dependency on more than one tool made it hard for them to keep things organized. So, Zeb Evans wanted to create a single platform where teams could manage the tasks, and docs, and communicate in one place.

The good MVP for ClickUp was developed with the following core principles in mind:

• Task management was the key focus of MVP. It made it possible for teams to create task lists, set priorities, and track progress.
• The flexibility of ClickUp's MVP allowed the users to personalize the platform to their specific needs by adding or removing fields like list, board, calendar, etc.
• ClickUp is mostly preferred for being able to integrate. It works well with other tools that users are dependent on like Slack, Google Drive, and Trello.

Business Growth

The ClickUp MVP was launched in 2017, it was offered for free. This was the reason it gathered quick feedback and built a strong user base. Targeting teams that were in need of a flexible tool to manage their work. the idea proved popular. Most users found it helpful and started to spread the word. This paved the way for the adoption of the tool in different industries. Slowly by adding specific customized features such as advanced reports, dedicated support, etc. for big business, it started attracting larger companies. This elevated ClickUp from a tool popular within small teams to a platform used by major corporations.

8. Monday.com

For teams to perfectly manage tasks, and projects and manage workflows by personalizing them as per their needs, Moday.com is an excellent Work OS. How do you think this successful Work operating system planned, launched, and grew their great Minimum Viable Product?

MVP Plan

Teams have diverse needs and of course, there are diverse project management tools available too. However, these tech tools seemed too complex to meet the different needs of the teams. It would be appropriate if there could be a customizable tool that easily suits their varied workflow irrespective of the task or industry. Understanding this need Roy Mann and Eran Zinman came up with the product idea of Monday.com.

The MVP for Monday.com was planned based on a few key principles:

• Accessible visual task management where every user could streamline their task easily because of its user-friendly interface.
• Users can customize the board's suings columns and statuses as per the teams work flow. This made the MVP a great hit.
• All team members can stay updated with the project's progress as the MVP focuses on real-time updates and ease of collaboration

Business Growth

Launched under the name Daplus in the year 2014, Monday.com was keen on evolving as a tool that promises ease of use especially to small to medium-sized teams. Wonder why? these teams are those who badly need a user-friendly management tool.

And, address this need has made Daplus stand out from more complex tools in the market. Later in 2017, it got rebranded as Monday.com. Their major marketing campaign made the platform reach a global audience.

The popularity of Monday.com was from teams that started using it and shared about its flexibility and ease of use among businesses, start-ups, and even large enterprises.

Slowly the platform grew to attract more enterprise clients with highly advanced features such as security, compliance, and administrative control This shift supported the platform to expand its user base and reserve its position as the superior in the project management space.

9. Calendly

Founded by Tope Awotona, it's a scheduling tool that helps users set up meetings, let others know their availability for a meet-up, etc. Now let's figure out how Calendly's MVP was planned, launched, and grew

MVP Plan

The founder noticed the common problem that prevailed in scheduling meetings. This often demands a lot of back-and-forth emails that are both time-consuming and frustrating. All he wanted to do was develop a simple tool that could automate the process making this easier and better.

The MVP for Calendly focused on solving this specific problem with the below-listed features:

• Automated scheduling eliminated the need for multiple emails. instead one can show the others their available time letting the others pick one that works for them.
• Being able to integrate with the mostly used calendar services like Google, Outlook, and iCloud. Once the meeting gets scheduled. It gets automatically added to the calendar of both parties.
• The MVP stage had an easy-to-use interface that made it easy for users to set up and share their availability.

Business Growth

The Calendly MVP was launched in 2013 targeting those who schedule;e meetings frequently like salespeople, recruiters, and consultants. Awotona offered the Minimum Viable Product for free. This helped him gather valuable feedback from a larger user base and refine his build.

Word-of-mouth was the reason for the popularity of this tool. So every time one uses Calendly to book a meeting they start spreading about its use to the other in need. Slowly with the viral growth effect, the tool evolved with features that align with the needs of larger organizations like like single sign-on (SSO), administrative controls, and compliance. This is how Calendly transcended from a tool for individuals and small teams to one always adopted by large enterprises even today.

10. Zapier

Zapier is the exactl tool for those who wants to automate tasks by connecting different apps without the need to code. Here's how Wade and Bryan planned, launched, and grew the basic version of the renowned tool.

MVP Plan

Many people in small businesses are dependent on various tools but they are struggling to connect them all. This is primarily due to their lack of technical skills. Having noted this problem Wade Foster, Bryan Helmig, and Mike Knoop envisioned a tool that can make it possible and quite easy for anyone to automate tasks between apps with zero coding knowledge.

The successful MVP for Zapier was aimed to crack this integration problem by helping users to:

• Users enjoyed performing simple automation called Zaps. For example, They can save mail attachments from Gmail to Dropbox. They can even create online storage or new Trello cards from Slack messages.
• No coding knowledge was needed the automation setup was made possible through clear step-by-step guides.
• The Minimum Viable Product allowed automation among the few most used apps and gained user trust.

Business Growth

When launched in 2012 the founders made manual integration for users who requested them. This helped them understand the user needs and demand for their product. Zapier offered a freemium model that let users create basic automation for free. but they had to pay if they were accessing advanced features like integration with premium apps or Multi-step Zaps.

So, by letting users explore the tool for free of cost led to the rapid adoption of Zapier.

This growth made the simple version of Zapier evolve with features that not only attracted small businesses but also larger organizations. This shift helped Zapier expand its user base to include not only small businesses but also larger enterprises that needed to automate complex workflows at scale.

How AppKodes Help You Design and Develop Your MVP?

At Appkodes, we’re experts in guiding businesses through our MVP app development services. You may be refining your business model, designing your first landing page, or even launching your Minimum viable product, our seasoned development team has the expertise to make it into a smooth and successful experience.

Do you think how are we turning the vision of entraprenures into reality?

We validate your business idea quickly with market research and cost-effectively. Our team tests your business concept with a minimum viable product and helps you gather essential feedback. This shall be used to refine your approach. We don’t just build MVPs; we connect the development process with your target audience. This is to ensure your product hits the mark.

We've walked the talk by developing our own SaaS products with Minimum Viable Products. Read another blog of mine on building an MVP on a budget, where I share how I planned my next product’s MVP. Moreover, we have successfully helped numerous service based startups transform their ideas into thriving businesses.

So, never mind if you need a low-fidelity MVP, a high-fidelity MVP, or it may be even a single feature MVP, we’ve got you covered. Our team shall nurture your idea every step of the way, turning it into a powerful tool for success.