The MVP is an experiment, not a product tier — the trap is shipping the minimum, calling it done, and building atop the scaffolding until the
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Minimum to learn: the smallest build that tests your riskiest assumption with real users — a question posed in software, with success criteria written before launch.
The MVP 'works,' pressure shifts to features, the temporary auth and the skipped tests calcify, and eighteen months later the rewrite conversation arrives — technical debt with a strategy costume.
Scope features to minimum, not engineering discipline — the $25K–$75K MVP with clean architecture converts to a product; the hackathon artifact converts to archaeology.
Post-validation checkpoint: what did we learn, what gets rebuilt properly, what scales as-is — the decision the trap skips, scheduled in advance.
Skipping the discipline this article describes until an incident, audit, or stalled project forces it — every practice above is cheaper adopted early than retrofitted under pressure.