There's just so much to do!
It's nuts. I've been working on the foundation of a personal finance manager, and there's just so many things that need to be done, to even approach an MVP. So much boilerplate to make the product tick (user auth, 3rd party API implementation, setting up the dev/staging environment, UI work...)
It makes you really appreciate everybody who posts a "Finished the MVP" milestone. You rock guys and girls! 🙌
Any of you ever feel like the road to an MVP/prototype is so long? And that's before you get to validate/chat with people about it. My biggest fear is getting to a bare-minimum version, and finding out that I've been working in a completely wrong direction the whole time.
Yes! Been building web apps for 10 years and still kills me how much boilerplate and basic setup needs to happen to get something out the door. What tech stack are you using? I’m working on a product that should speed things up significantly for React devs.
When you get that working let me know haha
Didn’t want to be spammy, but since you asked.. It’s live at divjoy.com.
Haha, exactly. Divjoy.com looks great btw. This is exactly what I was thinking about, as I was setting everything up: "There needs to be a repository on GitHub with all of this crap already pre-configured"
The thing that'd be missing for me with Divjoy is a C# backend. I have a React SPA + a C# API + Auth0.
Thanks! Yeah, I've had a fair number of users export a codebase then strip out our backend logic (which is fairly minimal) and port over to their backend. Not the smoothest process though, so maybe I can export other backend languages in the future or have an option to just not include that logic for people that already have their API running. Appreciate the feedback!
There is! And it only expands.
My advice is always to ruthlessly reduce scope. What's the bare minimum you can go with? What can you remove? What's optional? Do you really need a staging environment for an MVP? Do you need all those extra features and bells and whistles?
Usually the answer is no. There's a ton of stuff that you'd love to have eventually, but you don't need it immediately.
Reducing scope will make your job easier, allow you to launch faster, prevent you from wasting a bunch of time on the wrong thing (or working so long that you get bored and give up), free you up for other crucial tasks you may be neglecting (talking to customers), and give you a smaller surface area over which you can produce higher quality work. I could go on. The benefits are endless.
I believe Josh Pigford was able to build and release the MVP for Baremetrics in 7 days. Take that as your inspiration!
Thanks! That's a great comment. I suspect it ("reduce scope") is something that's best heard often, and repeatedly. "ABC - Always Be Cutting-that-scope"
And an MVP in 7 days is very inspiring.
When you get to 50% done, make a priority list every morning. Eliminate anything on that list that is not absolutely necessary to get to a launch. Do this daily.
Thanks a lot, this is great advice. Have to be brutal about saying no to yourself.
I know exactly what you mean lol. I'm actively working on getting better at defining what are the critical features of an MVP. 4 types of user auth with forgot and reset password features are probably not business critical, but I still code and maintain these things.
Thanks! Funny you mention auth, it has been a major time-waster for me in past projects. So this time I decided to go with Auth0.
Very good point on maintenance too, it's not just about the upfront time investment. Once you make it, you're stuck with it too.