Most people are not upfront about how much developing an MVP will cost.
Some of that is because – just how long is that piece of string anyway. But I think more of that in the IT industry, we gatekeep pricing because its harder to sell to someone who’s already of the mindset that they can’t afford it.
Anyway, here’s a thought experiment – which may seem unrelated. If you want to advertise your product on Google AdWords, can you run a £200 experiment and see how it goes, or do you need to spend multiple thousands of pounds to collect enough meaningful data, and then see how it went.
The answer is that short, cheap experiments in that context never give good results because there’s not enough forward motion to “dial in” the outcome you want. The DOMAIN is too big to run cheap experiments, because that world is tuned for people spending 6, 7 figures.
So you have a similar problem with MVPs. You can run cheap experiments. You need to spend a sum of money that’s – frankly – a bit painful.