Build the product
Building your MVP
Build the smallest thing that tests the biggest risk.
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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 ...
How do I decide which features to cut from v1?
Cut everything that doesn't help you learn whether people want the core thing. Pick the one workflow your earliest, most desperate customers need a...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
How do I decide the single riskiest assumption my MVP should test instead of trying to prove the whole idea at once?
List every belief your business needs to be true (people want this, they'll pay this much, you can acquire them cheaply, you can deliver it), then ...
I keep polishing the design and refactoring instead of shipping. How do I know I'm gold-plating my MVP versus doing necessary work?
If the work doesn't change what you learn from your next real user, it's gold-plating. Pixel-perfect UI, clean architecture, and edge-case handling...
Should my MVP be a mobile app or a web app? My users are mostly on phones in smaller Indian cities.
For a first MVP, a mobile-friendly web app almost always wins: no app-store review, no install friction, one codebase, and instant updates when you...
How do I set up analytics and feedback in my MVP so I actually learn something, without over-engineering tracking?
Instrument the two or three moments that prove your core assumption (did they reach the aha, did they come back, did they pay) and ignore the rest ...
I'm a solo technical founder. How do I MVP a two-sided marketplace when I need both buyers and sellers before it works at all?
Don't build the marketplace, fake one side and hand-run the match. Pick the harder-to-get side (usually supply), recruit a tiny concentrated pool m...
Should I open-source my MVP or build in public to get early users, or does that just help competitors copy me?
For most early founders, the attention and trust from building in public outweigh the copying risk, because execution, distribution, and community ...
My MVP works but nobody sticks around after signing up. How do I diagnose whether it's a product problem or an onboarding problem?
Watch real sessions: if users never reach the core value moment, it's onboarding or activation; if they hit it and still leave, the product itself ...
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