MVP
What exactly does "viable" mean? Let's explore this with an analogy.
Imagine a world where people walk everywhere—no cars, carriages, bikes, skateboards, or even riding animals exist. You have a groundbreaking idea to make people move faster: a car! However, you lack the funds to build one. So, you create a simple device, a skateboard, to help people move faster. It's easy to make and will likely sell well. While most of the tooling you purchase won't be useful for car making, you'll profit enough to progress your plan.
Once you gain enough capital, you start making scooters. You use similar materials, but things are quite different. People appreciate the improved handling and happily buy them. You gather more money and start making bikes. The steering mechanism is similar to the scooter, but everything else is new. Despite the increased price, bikes sell well due to their comfort. Time flies, and you can finally start making cars.
Was the scooter "viable" in this scenario? Certainly. It solved a problem, even if roughly, and allowed for further development.
Now imagine a world where multiple car brands exist, but their seats aren't comfy enough. You don't have enough money to build a whole car. Would starting with skateboards help your potential customers? Not likely—they want a car with better seats. Other people may buy your skateboards, but for a different purpose. So, is the skateboard a "viable" option for solving the uncomfortable seat problem? No. It might help you gather capital, though.
Now, imagine you have some capital to push out an early car design with better seats. Making skateboards first may help you gain more money, but pushing out the car ASAP might bring faster profits. It's risky, but if you know what you're doing, it can be worth it.
There's another option: make aftermarket seats for existing cars. They may need adapters and reverse engineering, but it’s relatively cheap compared to building a whole car. This quickly addresses your customers' pain points.
Why am I talking about this? The software landscape is similar. If you're creating something innovative to disrupt the market, it may be worth developing a tool that allows users to do something completely new, even if it's slow and rough. But if there are multiple tools out there that annoy you, you either need to do everything they already do plus fix the issues or try modifying one.
In my case with FeedFathom, I first fell in love with RSS thanks to Opera's M2, which provided a seamless experience. When Opera was deprecated, I turned to Firefox's NewsFox. Unfortunately, Mozilla got rid of classic extensions. Then I found SmartRSS, but it was initially only for Chromium-based Opera. Eventually, the author allowed modifications, so I made it work in Firefox.
When Google announced Manifest v3, I knew I had to do something because sooner or later SmartRSS will stop working in Firefox too and it was too complex to migrate to the new standard. I wanted an aggregator outside my main machine with comfortable access from other devices. Pre-existing services didn't work for me, so I created my own feed aggregation and reading service with a GUI I love. It’s not perfect, but it does what it needs to for my niche.
Creating something viable isn’t just about solving a problem—it’s about solving the right problem in the right way given your circumstances.