Building the Product

How do I decide which features to cut from v1?

A starting point

Cut everything that doesn't help you learn whether people want the core thing. Pick the one workflow your earliest, most desperate customers need and ship only that end-to-end. Every feature you add before product-market fit is a bet you're making with time you don't have.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 3 link-checked Watch Read

Watch

▶️ Video
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it The single most-cited practical talk on scoping a first product, from the person who ran YC's accelerator. It cuts through the theory and shows what an MVP actually looks like using Airbnb, Twitch, and Stripe.

How to Plan an MVP

On Y Combinator (YouTube) by Michael Seibel (YC) ~13 min

How to Plan an MVP
  • Talk to users before you build anything.
  • Launch something lean in weeks, not months, the goal is to start the feedback loop.
  • Don't try to solve every problem for every user; ship narrow and ugly.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →
▶️ Video
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it Michael Seibel's crisp framing of holding the problem and customer tightly while holding the solution loosely, the mindset that keeps competitor and problem research honest. Free and canonical.

How to Plan an MVP

On Y Combinator Startup Library by Michael Seibel ~15 min

  • Hold the problem and customer tightly, the solution loosely
  • Talk to a few users before building, a little research beats none
  • 'No competitors' often signals a weak problem, not a blue ocean
  • Iterating changes the solution; pivoting changes the problem
Open ycombinator.com →

Read

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it The customer-development originator's clearest statement on scoping the minimum feature set to reach your earliest believers. The sharpest antidote to feature creep in v1.

Perfection by Subtraction, The Minimum Feature Set

From steveblank.com by Steve Blank ~8 min read

  • Ship the smallest set your earlyvangelists will actually pay for.
  • Extra features before fit are engineering waste.
  • The MVP is a Customer Development tactic, get it into users' hands fast.
Open steveblank.com →

People also ask

What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to test your single riskiest assumption, not a shrunken version of your dream product. Ask 'what's the ... Beginner 3 resources → How long should building an MVP take? Weeks, not months. If your MVP will take more than 4-8 weeks, your scope is wrong, not your timeline. Airbnb, Stripe, and Twitch all launched narro... Beginner 3 resources → Should I build an MVP at all, or can I validate without one? If you haven't talked to ~20-30 potential customers yet, don't build anything, you're not validating, you're procrastinating in code. A concierge M... Beginner 3 resources → How do I get my first users for the MVP? Recruit them by hand, one conversation at a time, this is the whole point of an early startup. Go to where your users already are, DM them, email t... Beginner 2 resources → What's the difference between an MVP and just a cheap, half-finished product? An MVP is a learning tool with a clear hypothesis attached; a cheap product is just a bad product. The point isn't to spend less money, it's to buy... Intermediate 2 resources → My MVP needs users to log in, pay, and get notifications. Should I build auth, payments, and email myself or glue together no-code and third-party tools? For a first MVP, buy or borrow everything that isn't the thing you're testing. Auth (Firebase, Clerk, Supabase), payments (Razorpay, Stripe), and e... Beginner 3 resources →