In April, David Cummings discussed “Front-End Only MVPs” and described them as a “simpler” approach to building technology that would limit risk and allow an entrepreneur to iterate with customers quickly.

I could not disagree more with this notion of a non-working MVP. That is by definition NOT a product. It’s a prototype.

In software, a prototype is something that big companies like to do to waste time and money. It serves very little purpose other than to sell investors (or fool investors for the cynics).

An MVP must work and provide business value to the end user. To do that, data must always persist. The combined output must be more valuable than the combined input. That cannot be accomplished with a “Front-End Only MVP”.