How to build a product people love: 8 easy steps and 1 really hard one

Most vibe coded apps die in the graveyard. Not because the idea was bad. Not because the builder wasn't smart enough. Because they skipped the hard part.
Here's the full framework I used to build gobananas.dev.

Step 1: Live the pain
Don't start with an idea. Start with a problem you have personally experienced or watched others suffer through up close. Swim in it. Understand it intimately.
Then ask yourself — and anyone who will listen — one question: how much would you have paid if a solution like this existed?
If the answer is "a lot" and people say it without hesitating, keep going.

Step 2: Build something ugly that solves the problem
Not pretty. Not polished. Not scalable. Just functional enough to solve the specific pain you identified in step one.
Resist every urge to make it nice. You are not building a product yet. You are building proof.

Step 3: Share it
Show it to people who have the problem. At first that's probably going to be friends, family, coworkers — and that's fine. The filter isn't who they are to you, it's whether they actually have the pain you're solving. A friend who genuinely suffers from this problem is worth ten strangers who don't.
Watch their faces. Watch what confuses them. Watch what makes them lean in despite the ugly.

Step 4: The hard one — iterate
This is where most people quit.
Your prototype is going to embarrass you. Stupid things will break. You will fix one thing and something else will fall apart. You will feel almost done for what feels like forever.
People will give you feedback that stings because they were genuinely excited about what you built but what you built kind of sucks. That excitement is the signal. The suckiness is just the work.
Stay in this loop. It is supposed to feel like this.

Step 5: Stay in the loop until your core group loves it
Not likes. Loves. There is a difference and you will feel it when it happens.
Step 6: Add one or two more people
Expand the circle slightly. New eyes, new edge cases, new feedback. Repeat the loop.
Step 7: Keep going until the core group is happy
You are not done until the people who know the problem best tell you you've solved it.
Step 8: Find your first strangers
This is the real test. People who don't know you, don't owe you anything, and have no reason to be nice. When a couple of strangers love it, you have something.
Step 9: Button things up
Now — and only now — think about pricing, payments, and packaging. Not before. Everything before this was about building something worth paying for.

I built GoBananas this way. A platform that takes founders from idea to production-ready software using AI — vibe coded by a vibe coder, for vibe coders who want to ship real things to real users.
If you want to try it: Gobananas.dev