The V in MVP now stands for 'vibed'

There’s been debate in startup circles for years around the V in MVP: “viable”, “valuable”, “validated”? Now it seems to stand for “vibed”.

I’ve been working with some smart new entrepreneurs who are taking a vibe approach — getting their idea to a surprisingly polished MVP in weeks, and into users’ hands faster than ever. These are multi-skilled professionals; semi-technical, not devs, but with a deep understanding of their customer. That combo, plus some increasingly standard tools, is letting them validate ideas quickly without over-engineering.

The modern MVP stack

The playbook seems to be:

👉 Supabase for auth, session and user management
👉 shadcn for the UI component layer
👉 Vercel for deployment and hosting
👉 Stripe for subscriptions and billing
👉 Cursor as the vibe IDE

This isn’t about cutting corners — it’s about being strategic with complexity. These entrepreneurs know exactly what they’re optimising for: speed to market and user feedback, not technical perfection.

Postponing the hard stuff

They know the path from MVP to production-grade means eventually tackling test coverage, security, observability, maintainability and more. But this stack lets them postpone that work until the idea proves itself — or the next one does.

It’s a calculated trade-off. Why spend months building robust infrastructure for an idea that might not resonate? Better to get something that feels polished in front of users quickly, then scale the engineering sophistication as the business case solidifies.

The power of “good enough”

What strikes me most is how this approach embraces “good enough” as a feature, not a bug. These MVPs aren’t throwaway prototypes — they’re genuinely usable products that feel professional from day one. The vibe matters as much as the functionality.

Users don’t see the technical debt or missing test coverage. They see a product that works, looks good, and solves their problem. That’s often enough to validate whether you’re onto something worth pursuing.

What are you seeing out there? What’s your go-to stack for testing new ideas?