We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 13 cities confirmed, 697 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city

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Building your MVP

Build the smallest thing that tests the biggest risk.

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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... Beginner 18 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 17 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 19 resources → 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... Intermediate 17 resources → 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 ... Intermediate 18 resources → 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... Advanced 17 resources → When is the right moment to stop iterating on the MVP and rebuild it properly, and how do I avoid the second-system rewrite trap? Rebuild when the tech debt is measurably slowing every new feature or breaking under real usage you already have, not when the code merely feels ug... Advanced 20 resources → 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 ... Advanced 19 resources →

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