As others say, you can try to sell it, although it sounds unlikely. But if you want to try, ask yourself two questions:

Who specifically would be passionate about this specific idea?

How much would that person have to pay to replicate what you have?

The first question gets to how to market this. Depending on the topic of your MVP, maybe there's a wannabe-entrepreneur somewhere who just couldn't come up with his own idea but has money in his pocket. You need to find that person.

The second gets at pricing. Most MVPs are throwaway code. And even if it was well written, most code without the original team gets thrown away, because it's expensive to find somebody who knows the domain and tech stack, get them up to speed, and clean up the tech debt. So the fair comparison is something like: how much would it cost a discount outsourcer to build a replica? That ceiling is probably pretty low.

Now you can do the math: fairly valuing your time, subtract your cost to find, sell, and close that prospect from your expected selling price. For most people, that estimated return is negative, especially once you weight for risk. Maybe you're different, but be sure you have a good understanding of why.

Agreed, and I'd be careful with thinking about it as "well written" in this context. An abstract notion of quality doesn't matter nearly as much as whether it suits the person taking over the code base. If you're selling to another developer, then they have to have similar language and framework tastes. If you're selling to a non-technical person, then it's more about whether they can find somebody who can more efficiently work with your code than build from scratch. So in a strictly commercial sense, a mediocre PHP site can be more valuable that a very smartly constructed Erlang site.

But say you had a custom hardware design - for a market. Let's say that the design has been tested with a hard prototype for design verification. what have you got? A set of files, that compile (in a factory), to an artifact that can be sold to a market for a price. How's that different from software, other than logistics, depreciation and inventory issues?

Only potientally asset you have to sell is the domain, which in my opinion is a completely different question; that being, how do I value & sell a domain?

The hosting, design, payment & registration systems, etc. - are most likely are liabilities unless proven otherwise given the related technical debt[1]; basically, these are commodities which best acquired from scratch based on the needs of party acquiring them.

Lastly, as you likely know, the point of an MVP is to validate an idea is of value, since ideas generally speaking are worthless; I would actually argue that good, but unvalidated ideas, have on average a negative value, since resources are required to store/process them and most "good" ideas fail validation attempts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt

As such, I would argue that if you are unable to find users it is highly unlikely you will find a buyer without knowingly materially misrepresenting the opportunity and/or exploiting a naive buyer.

It's a common problem, thanks for the opportunity to express my take on it.

Hard things: 1. Acquiring paying customers 2. Keeping paying customers 2. Product Management once you have customers

People will pay you more for hard things than they will for easy things (there are, of course, exceptions to this, but execution of "great ideas" is much harder than having those ideas).

But even "little more than nothing" is something. That's why I am asking.

[0] http://spark.laravel.com

A minimum, VIABLE product? Does it do anything? Does it do anything that others can't easily replicate?

Explain the "viable" to me.

"is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development"

If people are willing to pay for something, even before it has any features, that seems like a pretty good MVP to me.

Assuming that people are paying for it that is...

It turns out that when you fuck around with your customers and tell them that you have a product, only to have them find out that you have fuck-all and you are cobbling it together as they wait, your customers lose faith in you and think you are a douchebag.

And rightly so. Because pretending isn't doing.

Eric Ries has done untold damage to the tech and the business world. He is successful at one thing and one thing only: writing and marketing a book.

Generous people call his book a post-fact rationalization of success, but that would be overstating it grossly. Because he didn't have any success to rationalize post-fact.

It makes me angry that people think this horseshit has anything to do with creating value. Doing stuff and knowing how to do stuff has value. Yanking people around with smoke and mirrors does not. It mostly ends up wasting time and time is the one resource you can't get back.

I've always understood a MVP to be a product to have just enough features to add core value immediately. Bells and whistles to add more value are not included, but core value is.

For example, if you are writing scheduling software, MVP would be able to schedule better than, say on pen and paper, or whatever is standard functionality in the current market space. Future value would be adding features to "cast a wider net," so to speak.

Do people seriously consider MVP a way to pay for vaporware? Am I misunderstanding the situation?

The MVP is basically just a custom storefront for the service that is being sold and which provides the actual value.

> Does it do anything that others can't easily replicate?

No. But is is new and unique.

In order for an idea to have value you actually have to build something. If you can't be bothered to build something, it probably isn't a very exciting idea. So what you are trying to sell is an idea that you, by your own admission, don't think is very exciting. And what you have is essentially something you could put together in an afternoon.

The maximum I have ever paid for an idea is lunch. If I have reason to believe that someone will be able to interest me long enough that I'll make it through lunch, heck, I'll buy them lunch

If you want to transform it into value, you need to do a bit more. If the idea is really so boring that you won't, you could pay someone to work on the idea or you could partner up with someone. Freeing you up to have other ideas or whatever you are doing that is more fun than acting on the idea you are trying to sell.

Now here is a free tip: if you take an idea to a bigger audience, you may find other people that are interested in it. People who might want to do it. People that might have other ideas because of it. And yes, people who will tell you that your idea is rubbish. If your idea is good, someone might want to do it on their own. But this is less likely than you think. Because other people also have ideas. But in any case, if you tell more people about your idea you stand a bigger chance of getting help. Start with people you know who have built stuff.

I think that might work better than advertising an MVP

Best of lucks

There are forums to sell your domain on, Flippa/the like, SEDO/the like. I won't list them here since they're just a Google search away.

My advice would be to do whatever it takes to spend 4 hours (each of you) trying to get your first customer, payment in hand. If after that, you don't have a customer, then I think it's a fair thing to either write it off as a learning experience or seek the "hey someone else take over this invalidated idea" route.

If you manage that first customer, that could potentially motivate you to get the legal stuff done. I'm not sure your locale, but usually a Delaware LLC and generic ToS/PP is acceptable. You'll know when you don't need the generics, and when that time comes, you'll know.

You could be the next Pied Piper, which is why it never hurts to try.

I sold like 5-6 side projects which were abandoned for ages.

Edit: aka if it is a good idea, it is probably better to find someone to take it over for a gentlemen's agreement of a % later than tossing it away for a few $. IMHO of course.

This offer stands for anyone reading; send me your projects and I'll gladly take a look about buying :)

Assuming you and your partner put in 20 hours a week, I'd guess $5000 for an untested business is the best you could hope for.

I will send you an email.