The author speaks as if 'minimum', 'viable', 'product' are a Venn diagram rather than 2 adjectives and a noun, which muddies their point a bit. The Venn diagram version that people use is often feasible (can it be built), viable (will it sell), desirable (do people want to use it), which would've made their point clearer.
I think the trouble with MVP is that what we consider the "minimum that's viable" has changed — if you look at early days of Twitter for example (both its UI and the frequent 'fail whale' outages), it wouldn't pass muster today but at the time was enough to become one of the main platforms of the web.
Nowadays, you'd need a much more polished MVP in order to compete because the standard of what end-users expect has risen a lot (both in terms of functionality & NFRs, like security, robustness, interop, etc.).
I think the trouble with MVP is that what we consider the "minimum that's viable" has changed — if you look at early days of Twitter for example (both its UI and the frequent 'fail whale' outages), it wouldn't pass muster today but at the time was enough to become one of the main platforms of the web.
Nowadays, you'd need a much more polished MVP in order to compete because the standard of what end-users expect has risen a lot (both in terms of functionality & NFRs, like security, robustness, interop, etc.).