Drew Houston is featured on the cover of Forbes magazine as the entrepreneur who out-Steve Jobs’ed Steve Jobs. He just raised $250 million for DropBox (as he explains in this TCTV interview). His success is well-earned, as Dropbox continues to earn its reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies.

But what these stories tend to leave out is that Drew has spent years doing the unglamorous work building not just a great product, but a great company. I’ve been happy to host him at the past two Startup Lessons Learned conferences, where he’s shared candidly the lessons he’s learned along the way. One of the techniques he used to validate the concept for Dropbox is so powerful – and so simple – that most entrepreneurs overlook it. It’s an example of building a minimum viable product (MVP). I call it the Dropbox MVP, in Drew’s honor, and I devoted a section of my new book to it, which is excerpted below.