Why MVPs Won't Cut It Anymore: Monetization Is All That Matters

Forbes

a day ago

AI has turned its share of truths about the world upside down.
The productivity of an individual has skyrocketed, to the point where even Ronald Coase, who gave us the theory of why firms exist in the first place, might rethink what companies are even good for if he were around today.
A solo founder, or two friends armed with a weekend and a case of cold brew, can now ship what once took entire engineering teams months to get out the door. Startups of today can do so much more than be lean, they can go borderline nuclear. And it's left one of the most sacred mantras in the startup playbook, the MVP, looking a little past its prime.
Steve Blank, Eric Ries and the rest of the Lean Startup movement weren't wrong when they built the startup lifecycle around the Minimum Viable Product. It was a work of genius for its time, and a well justified rallying cry for speed, customer focus, and rapid iteration that delivers proven results.
But today, that vision of the MVP is table stakes. If you're stopping there, you need not even bother getting started, because your competition is taking things much further.
It's time to update the acronym, and while we can keep the acronym 'MVP' we need to kick up the ambition. What matters now is racing to the Monetized Version of your Product, not just the minimum viable one.
This is the new startup baseline. And the founders who get it will leave everyone else in the dust.
Why MVPs aren't what they used to be
The MVP of yore worked for two main reasons.
First, it gave startups a clear, tangible goal to rally around. Hackathons, demo days, accelerator cohorts, all of it was built on the idea that if you could just get something functional in front of people quickly, magic would follow.
That 'build, pitch, iterate' loop has produced its fair share of unicorns. Think of Dropbox's early explainer video or Airbnb's barely-functional site for renting air mattresses in a San Francisco living room. Fail fast, rebuild faster.
Second, it kept teams honest and focused on what matters. Instead of gold-plating products in a vacuum, the MVP forced founders to build what customers considered 'good enough' to use, rather than what engineers thought was 'perfect' to launch. It was a much-needed antidote to the over-engineered, under-purchased products littering startup graveyards.
And the concept still works. It hasn't lost its core power. But it hasn't gained any either, which is exactly the problem.
The issue is that the world around it has changed. What counted as an MVP cycle even two years ago looks archaic today. AI tools like Cursor, Replit, and Claude can collapse weeks of development into hours. A single developer can spin up front-end, back-end, integrations, and even basic go-to-market collateral before Monday morning is over.
So why are we still treating the MVP, something that does 'just enough,' as the finish line for validation?
The monetized version of your product
Here's the better target we should be aiming for.
Don't stop when you've got something that works. Stop when you've got something that sells.
The moment when you know you've found the right Monetized Version of your Product is when customers don't just nod politely in a discovery call, they start reaching for their credit cards before you've even finished your sentence. It's the first release where feedback rains in the only form that truly counts: currency.
This isn't a rehash of the 'build fast, sell early' mantra, mind you.
The market you're operating in now demands a deeper mindset shift, and it calls for a reframing of revenue as the clearest, sharpest signal of product–market fit. And with AI cutting development time from months to days, you can accelerate toward that signal faster than at any other point in startup history.
Remember, the more a client is willing to pay, the more value you're delivering. Your job as a founder is to get as deep into the customer's wallet as quickly as possible, not because you're chasing dollars for their own sake, but because those dollars are the proof that your product is solving the biggest, most urgent problem they have. That's how both sides win.
Founders have always been in this race, but somewhere along the way, we let ourselves believe that 'getting something out there' was enough. We thought that the goal of entrepreneurship was to launch and seek VC funding, not to capture the most valuable use of our time and our team's energy.
Meeting the client's immediate needs is just the opening gambit. The real work is in parlaying that first win into deeper wins, inching closer and closer until you're solving the rawest, highest-value version of the problem.
Aiming for the most effectively Monetized Version of your Product puts you back on that original trajectory and keeps you running at the pace of your fastest competitors.
How to run the new MVP motion
This approach requires a change in founder psychology. The old MVP culture rewarded building something 'good enough' and sticking with it long enough to iterate into greatness. The new game rewards testing enough variations to find something great from day one in the only way that matters, which is cash in the bank.
You shouldn't fall in love with your first idea and nurture it through awkward adolescence. You shouldn't simply ship something that works and gets positive feedback either. Instead, you're running a portfolio strategy: spread bets early, concentrate only on the winners.
The startups that win this cycle will be the ones that understand the baseline has moved. The Monetized Version is the new MVP. Everything before that is practice.
Here's the new motion you need to run to keep moving.
1. Go broad before you go deep
Your first goal is not perfect execution on any given idea or pain point. Instead, you're covering as much surface area as quickly as possible, prospecting for gold. Use AI to generate multiple approaches to the same problem. Build wireframes, clickable prototypes, or simple working versions for each one. Cast the net wide, and pitch even wider.
2. Test in parallel
Don't obsess over sequential build-measure-learn cycles for a single idea. Spin up five different versions and host different landing pages. A/B the company itself, not just the product. Put each in front of a small set of potential customers and watch which one moves wallets, not just mouths.
3. Double down on monetization signals
A 'That's cool' is worthless. A 'Send me the invoice' is golden. The speed, frequency, and willingness to pay should outweigh every other form of feedback in your decision-making as you map out the path from one MVP to another.
4. Treat pivots as plays, not failures
Switching between product concepts in this model isn't a pivot. Moving from one trench to another is how you explore the map before choosing the territory to conquer. AI makes the cost of switching almost negligible, so treat it as part of the plan.
5. Scale only the winner
Once you've found the most effectively Monetized Version, that's when you pour resources into depth, features, and defensibility. Until then, treat everything as a draft.
Instead of crafting one MVP and running a single feedback loop, AI allows you to spin up a portfolio of MVPs, each one aimed at a different angle and a slightly different pain point.
And remember, if you aren't running the new MVP playbook, you can bet that your competitors are.