Most founders come to me with a list of 40 features they want to build. They've been thinking about this product for months. They know every edge case, every user type, every potential power user who might want an advanced settings panel.
And almost every time, I have to tell them the same thing: we need to cut 90% of this.
Not because the features are bad ideas. But because building them first is the single most reliable way to make sure your product never gets in front of a customer.
The Real Problem
Here's what I see happen over and over:
- Founder has an idea
- Founder spends 3-4 months building everything
- Founder launches to... silence
- No one buys it
The reason isn't usually the product. It's that the founder spent so long building that they never had time to validate. They built what they imagined customers wanted, not what customers actually need.
What a Real MVP Is
An MVP is not a bad version of your full product. It's a focused version — one that does exactly one thing well enough for someone to pay for it.
The question isn't "what's the minimum version of my vision?" It's "what's the fastest thing I can build that someone will pay for?"
These are very different questions.
The Exercise I Use With Every Founder
I ask founders to answer two questions:
- Who is the most desperate version of your target customer — the person who has this problem so badly that they'd buy an imperfect solution today?
- What's the single thing that person needs to get from point A to point B?
Everything outside of that is v2.
A Real Example
I worked with a founder building a "platform for managing freelancer relationships." Their original scope included invoicing, contracts, time tracking, project management, a communication hub, and a client portal.
We shipped a single feature: automated follow-up emails when a freelancer goes quiet.
That's it. 6 weeks to build. Launched at $29/month. Closed 8 paying customers in the first two weeks — all of whom had the exact same problem.
The invoicing and contracts came three months later, because now the founder knew exactly who they were building for.
The Takeaway
Your first product doesn't need to do everything. It needs to do one thing well enough for the right person to pull out their credit card.
Build that. Ship it. Learn from real customers. Then build the rest.
That's the whole playbook.