Should I continue developing my site further or keep a simple landing page with email capture to test my idea?

Yep. Although I don't think that's limited to MVPs. It's just always the case. You can copy code, features, etc. but you can't copy soul. There will always be people who copy you. It's better to keep moving forward and accept the copy cats than it would be to try and shield yourself. Keep an eye on the copy cats. But in the long run, if you're authentic and worthy, you will beat them.

The idea of an MVP is 'minimum, viable' ... If you feel you need a "good amount" of funding, I would challenge if you are minimum enough. Obviously, without knowing the details of your product, your ideal customer, or what need you will solve, it is hard to help expose what is necessary in an MVP and what is a Phase II or Phase III feature. I am happy to help you work through this, or answer specific questions, to get you rolling. Just book a call with some times that will work for you. Regardless, I would love to know more about it and how it goes after launch. To your success, -Shaun

There isn't a lot of published information that I've seen (or can quickly find) on how washio and postmates validated their business model, but I definitely agree that starting fairly lean and validating your business first even if that means a lot of manual effort up front is a better approach than investing heavily in infrastructure before launch. Of course, if you are very successful, that manual work will pile up quickly and managing it could be quite painful, but you can have worse problems than a successful launch. Maff Rigby's 7-day startup recommendation is definitely a good one.

Apple will allow a developer to register 100 UDID devices per 12 month cycle to test via TestFlight or HockeyApp. Having started with TestFlight, I would really encourage you NOT to use it, and go directly to HockeyApp. HockeyApp is a much better product. There is also enterprise distribution which allows you far more UDID's but whether you qualify for enterprise distribution is difficult to say. As part of your testing, I'd encourage to explicitly ask your testers to only register one device. One of the things we experienced was some testers registering 3 devices but only used one, essentially wasting those UDID's where we could have given to other testers. Who you invite to be a tester should be selective as well. I think you should have no more than 10 non-user users. These people should be people who have either built successful mobile apps or who are just such huge consumers of similar mobile apps to what you're building, that they can give you great product feedback even though they aren't your user. Specifically, they can help point out non obvious UI problems and better ways to implement particular features. The rest of your users should be highly qualified as actually wanting what you're building. If they can't articulate why they should be the first to use what you're building, they are likely the wrong tester. The more you can do to make them "beg" to be a tester, the higher the sign that the feedback you're getting from them can be considered "high-signal." In a limited beta test, you're really looking to understand the biggest UX pain-points. For example, are people not registering and providing you the additional permissions you are requiring? Are they not completing an action that could trigger virality? How far are they getting in their first user session? How much time are they spending per user session? Obviously, you'll be doing your fair share of bug squashing, but the core of it is around improving the core flows to minimize friction as much as possible. Lastly, keep in mind that even with highly motivated users, their attention spans and patience for early builds is limited, so make sure that each of your builds really make significant improvements. Happy to talk through any of this and more about mobile app testing.

Look on Google Communities for technology focused BETA testing groups... Look on Linkedin Groups for business focused potential testers... Look on Facebook Pages for people who like apps/companies like what you are trying to bring to market... That should get you started.