Frank Robinson coined the Minimum Viable Product. This is what he had to say about it:

"The MVP is the right-sized product for your company and your customer. It is big enough to cause adoption, satisfaction and sales, but not so big as to be bloated and risky."

Steve Blank is credited with popularizing the term. Here he emphasizes that the MVP is about reaching sustainability for the company. What he calls an 'MVP tree', which produces potential MVP candidates, may be closer to what we're discussing here.

"An MVP tree is a way of methodically breaking your mission into smaller components and formulating MVP candidates that may get your company sustainable and scalable."

Ries, whoever he is, was free to make up his own definition, just as I can define the sky to be the hot molten lava deep inside the earth, but his definition does not match the usage of its originator nor is it in alignment with how (most) everyone else uses the term.

The author of the book that the other poster was talking about.

> Steve Blank is credited with popularizing the term

As is Ries.

> Here he emphasizes that the MVP is about reaching sustainability for the company.

Hmm. Here's a post from him that's absolutely not about sustainability but about validating core assumptions (and not building a product): https://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-pr...

> Ries, whoever he is, was free to make up his own definition, just as I can define the sky to be the hot molten lava deep inside the earth, but his definition does not match the usage of its originator nor is it in alignment with how (most) everyone else uses the term.

It would be very at odds with the current use of the term MVP to define what dropbox did as not an MVP.

This isn't becoming hugely productive, so I'll leave it where I started - I've had this argument before from your side, and the dropbox video is an MVP. It is not a niche view.