An MVP Should Audition for an Existing Job

Imagine a hypothetical founder preparing to take an enterprise SaaS idea from Kerala into conversations in Bengaluru. The presentation describes a shared workspace for internal requests. The prototype looks orderly. Yet the team it hopes to serve already manages those requests through messages, a spreadsheet and someone’s careful follow-up.

The founder has something to demonstrate. What remains unclear is whether anyone has a job available for the product.

My direct answer: turn the idea into a testable question about replacement. Ask whether a specific team can hand an existing responsibility to the proposed product—and what it would stop doing if that handover worked.

The real competitor may be an arrangement

From my perspective in enterprise technology and SaaS product building, it is useful to look beyond competing software. A founder may be competing with an arrangement: a document, an informal escalation route and a person who remembers what everyone else forgets.

That arrangement may be inconvenient without being easy to replace. It can contain exceptions, trusted relationships and ways of recovering when instructions are incomplete.

In our hypothetical example, the spreadsheet is not necessarily the whole system. The person maintaining it may also interpret vague requests, identify urgency and know whom to call. Replacing the sheet while overlooking that work could leave the team with a cleaner interface and a larger coordination burden.

I would want mentoring to make this hidden incumbent visible. Not to discourage the founder, but to give the product a fair audition against the work actually being done.

Ask what would leave, not only what would arrive

A familiar product question is whether people want a better way to manage requests. I find a replacement question more revealing:

For routine internal requests, can the team use the proposed workspace as its working record without maintaining the existing spreadsheet alongside it?

This is a hypothetical test question, not a claim about an existing product or customer.

Its value is that it asks for more than approval. It makes the founder examine whether the product can take responsibility for something currently handled elsewhere.

If the spreadsheet must remain, that is not automatically failure. Perhaps it serves a reporting need the new concept does not address. Perhaps the proposed product is better understood as an addition rather than a replacement. Either answer changes what should be built and how its value should be explained.

What concerns me is an MVP that appears useful only because the old arrangement continues carrying all the difficult work underneath it.

Rehearse the handover before building the room

Modern Innovation Hub in Kerala supports founders through mentorship, MVP development and investor connections. Within that context, I see particular value in connecting mentorship to the work an MVP must prove it can assume.

My connection to Bengaluru makes the Kerala-to-Bengaluru starting point relevant, but geography should not become the explanation for product readiness. A different setting can introduce different questions; it cannot substitute for a credible handover.

For the hypothetical request-management idea, I would suggest a rehearsal using non-sensitive sample requests. Let prospective users move those requests through a simple representation of the proposed product. Ask them to show where they would still reach for their existing tools or another person’s help.

The mentor’s role would be to keep those moments visible rather than explain them away.

A rehearsal cannot establish production reliability or prove lasting adoption. It can, however, expose responsibilities missing from the concept before development gives those omissions a polished surface.

A checklist for the replacement conversation

Before committing to MVP scope, I would work through this checklist with a founder:

• Name the current arrangement. Include people and informal practices, not just software.
• Identify the responsibility being transferred. Describe the work, rather than a feature category.
• State what could stop. Which duplicate entry, follow-up or separate record would no longer be necessary?
• Watch for concealed support. Is the old process quietly rescuing the proposed one?
• Keep a return path. A learning exercise should not require abandoning a dependable working method.
• Interpret the result honestly. Decide whether the concept replaces something, complements it or needs reconsideration.

I do not think every worthwhile product must eliminate an existing tool. Some additions earn their place. But they should earn it with an explicit benefit, not an unnoticed increase in work.

The mentoring question I would return to is simple: what responsibility can this idea genuinely carry? A founder’s ambition becomes more concrete when the answer is not another screen to build, but a piece of work someone can confidently hand over.