5 Things to Remove Before Launch — MVP is About Subtraction, Not Addition

We included 12 features in our first product. It took six months. Users only used two of them. The time spent on the remaining 10 was completely wasted. The essence of MVP lies in 'minimal', yet we are always obsessed with 'product'.

The hardest part of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is not making it, but deciding what not to make. For a solo entrepreneur, time is the only capital, and time spent on unused features is lost forever. Successful MVPs all have one thing in common: they boldly cut out the excess.

1. Dropbox — Released a Video Before the Product

Before building the synchronization feature, Dropbox released a demo video that made it look like it was working. Instead of a product, they tested the hypothesis of "Wouldn't it be great if this worked?" with a video. The waiting list exploded overnight.[^1]

The key was confirming demand without writing a single line of code.

Your Business Question: Can I validate what I'm trying to build now with a video, landing page, or manual operation without code?

2. Instagram — Cut 99% of Features

Instagram's predecessor was a check-in app called 'Burbn'. It had too many features. The founders discovered from data that people only used photo sharing, so they cut everything else and focused solely on photos.[^2]

Knowing what to remove is harder than knowing what to add.

Your Business Question: What is the one feature my users actually use? What happens if I remove everything else?

3. "Nice to Have" vs "Must Have"

In planning documents, every feature is labeled as "nice to have". Since they all seem valid, we want to include them all, which makes the MVP bloated.

The solution is ruthless categorization. Divide all features into two categories — must-have for the product to exist vs the rest. The first release includes only the former. The latter is built when users demand it.

Method: Ask "Will users leave if this is missing?" for each feature. If "No", exclude it from the initial release.

4. PMF is Measured, Not Felt

Judging Product-Market Fit (PMF) by "gut feeling" always leads to optimism. Rahul Vohra of Superhuman turned this into numbers. He asked users "How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product?" and considered "very disappointed" at over 40% as a PMF signal.[^3]

This 40% criterion, proposed by Sean Ellis, becomes a compass for "what to build next" after launch.

Your Business Question: What percentage of my users would be "very disappointed" without this? Have you ever measured it?

5. Write Requirements as 'Problems', Not 'Screens'

Beginner planning starts with "We need this screen." This traps you in solutions. Good requirements start with "What can't the user do in what situation, causing frustration?" Screens follow after.

Method: Rewrite each requirement line as "[Who] in [what situation] is trying to [do what] but is blocked by [what]."

One Sentence That Connects All 5

An MVP is not a small product. It is the smallest experiment to learn the fastest.

• Dropbox: Validate demand with a video before the product
• Instagram: Cut 99% of unused features
• Classification: Only release must-haves initially
• PMF: Measure 40%, not gut feeling
• Requirements: Focus on problems, not screens

For solo entrepreneurs, this is a blessing. Large companies can't discard what they've already built, but we can start small from the beginning.

If You Do One Thing Today

Take out your list of features you're planning to build, and write "Will users leave if this is missing? Y/N" next to each line. If more than half are "N", your MVP is still too big.

Request a Free Consultation → We will help you select what to remove from your feature list together.

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Sources (✅ 3/3 Verified, WebSearch 2026-06-01)

[^1]: Dropbox demo video (2007~2008) → waiting list surged from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight (viral on Hacker News and Digg, zero ads). — Secondary Source(mmtm.io). The text describes it only as "exploded" without numbers. https://mmtm.io/articles/dropbox-go-to-market-story/

[^2]: Burbn (up to 100 users) → retained only the photo sharing feature that users used, cut the rest → Instagram (removed about 50~60% of original features). — Startup Archive (Systrom). https://www.startuparchive.org/p/how-kevin-systrom-pivoted-a-failed-check-in-app-into-instagram

[^3]: "How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product?" with "very disappointed" at 40%+ = PMF signal. Proposed by Sean Ellis after analyzing ~100 startups in 2009, applied by Superhuman (Rahul Vohra). https://learningloop.io/glossary/sean-ellis-score

This article is a flagship of the STAR-T service planning sector. All three figures have been verified.

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