Can I skip the discovery phase? Why not?

Can I skip the discovery phase?

Yes. You don't have anyone to answer to. You can do whatever you want. The choice is entirely yours.

BUT...

You probably don't want to skip the discovery phase if your goal is to build a profitable business.

Here's why...

There are a few reasons your business might not work.

The riskiest (most likely) one of these reasons is that you aren't building something that people are willing to pay for.

So it makes sense to test this first (by doing discovery and sales) before you waste any time on less risky tasks like building the product.

Think of it like checking your partner will let you have a dog as a pet before you start building a kennel in the garden ;)

my 2c

| Or I can skip it without serious risks❓

absolutely, however

1. be rational and don't overthink it
   if competition exists and has reasonable profits - that's enough for discovery, build, see results
   if you feel there is a problem but there is no solution yet -> 2)
   if you are creating vitamin -> 2)

2. If this is your first time, just do it. FINISH THE PRODUCT in a timely manner (like 1-6months). It's the execution/persistence/finalizing that matters long term, not the EXCITING discovery. See results yourself.
   THE ONLY bad thing you can do really is to not draw conclusions from your experiences and be naive that you can plan for everything.

did flappy bird do discovery phase? (vitamin)
no

did airbnb do discovery phase? (pain killer)
no, they pivoted, pivoted, pivoted until they discovered

Is it something you'll use?

My project, at a minimum, is useful to one person. The amount of time and money that I've spent on it so far has been well spent even if nobody else ever uses it. Every feature, both already implemented or planned is something that is or will be useful to me.

Worst case if revenue never meets the hosting costs, I'll move it to a $5 a month droplet, password protect it and continue using it.

If I didn't feel that way, I would've done more discovery.

I don't think it's accurate to refer to the discovery phase as planning. I'd actually consider them to be totally unrelated. Discovery is about understanding the problem space, as @mashdog explains in their response.

The term planning makes me feel like you already decided you were going to build a specific solution. In that case, I would certainly hope you have been able to answer thesw two questions: Should this thing exist? How do I know?

I believe the discovery phase should encompass trying to answer the following questions

• is there a group of people who will pay for something I'm offering?
• how big is the group?
• how much will they pay?
• what does the competition look like?
• how quickly can I get to market?
• how can I test / validate any responses to the above

You'll iterate over the above as you develop your idea. Expect to pivot as you learn more about your customers. There are many pitfalls, but with sufficient preparation you could well have paying customers by the time you've finished your MVP.

As I'm sure you've read. the basic idea is that you want to fail fast and pivot to something valuable as quickly and painlessly as possible. Very easy to say (write), very hard to do in practice.

In answer to your question, I think you cannot skip this process without serious risks. The main risk being that you devote time and money building a fantastic product that no-one wants.

Guests on the IH podcast deliver this message over and over. The JT Marino episode has a great example of how to test a market https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/061-jt-marino-of-tuft-&-needle.