tulz.AI

On day 7, I had something real—a functional MVP that solved the core problem. But I wasn’t done. In fact, I was just getting started. The feedback loop is everything.

I sent my MVP to a handful of early users (friends, colleagues, etc.) and immediately gathered feedback. Their insights helped me spot gaps and areas for improvement. The best part? I could iterate fast since I built the MVP myself.

I didn’t wait until I had the perfect product. Instead, I shipped fast, got real-world feedback, and started improving.

Having both product management experience and coding skills really gave me an edge here. I’ve been through countless product development cycles, so I already knew how to scope out work efficiently.

Coding the MVP myself allowed me to iterate quickly without needing to bring in external devs. It also helped me stay laser-focused on what mattered most, since I wasn’t dealing with hand-offs or complex product requirements. I focused on:

Identifying the simplest tech stack that could get the job done.
Writing functional code to get things working, not perfect.
Leveraging libraries and tools that would speed up development (no need to reinvent the wheel!).
By the end of day 3, I had a working demo of the key feature!

I’m a huge believer in prototyping. In fact, I don’t even worry about full-scale development until I’ve got something tangible to test. The point of an MVP is to validate your idea, so why spend weeks perfecting features that users may not even care about?

In this case, I focused on building just the minimum functionality to prove the concept. I wanted users to be able to test the core feature of my product as quickly as possible.

So I sketched out the simplest version of the product and immediately jumped into building a prototype.

I’ve spent decades managing large-scale products, working with cross-functional teams, and delivering solutions that solve real problems. So when I decided to create my latest project, I started by identifying the core problem that my product would solve.

For me, the most important thing wasn’t to create a perfect solution right away but to narrow down the problem enough to deliver a usable prototype. I knew that solving just one key pain point would be enough for an MVP.

Hey Indie Hackers! 👋

I wanted to share a bit of my journey of building an MVP in just one week—yes, 7 days! And how I managed to pull it off thanks to my years of experience in product management and some good old coding skills. Here’s how I went from concept to a working prototype in no time, and why focusing on building first, refining later has been key to my success.