What is a minimal viable product(MVP)?

So, you have this idea that sparked a lot of interest in you. It may or may not do the same for the other people you're gonna show your project. That's why people do MVPs. To test something quickly: build and get feedback to understand whether to proceed further. You may love the idea but no one else does so.

     *Why it's minimal?* Imagine the idea you love and want to build. How many days you should spend creating a working prototype? Let's calculate: 4 features, plus 3 integrations, and a possibility to pay in all countries, and one more feature to show cool analytics, and awesome UI, and..., and... Hmm, it'd take you 9 months. Fine! You've built it in 13 months(some unexpected adjustments here and there). You released it to an alpha test and it occurred no one is interested. 

     You may say it's due to a lack of sufficient market research? You're right, let's do the research then. You did it and figured out that your target customers are private teachers in small schools. You talked to many of them and asked about the problem you try to solve. You did all the right things. Then, it's time to build something, right? So you've decided that in this case, it'll be fine to spend 13 months building a solution. You built it, showed it to the target potential customers and it turned out your solution doesn't address the problem they have. They would solve it differently! Fine, you collected the feedback and rectified your MVP in 2 months. Then, you repeated the release-get feedback cycle a few times spending a year overall to get a few people who want to use your solution. So, it's 2+ years just to build an MVP that people can use? 

     The main point in the MVP concept is to iterate fast. You build something fast, show it to your potential users, collect feedback on what's wrong, adjust the solution. Do this multiple times and you get a few users. Then more until a product-market fit where your problem is scalability. 

(source: Telegram)