You have an idea. You’re excited. Maybe you’ve even sketched it on a napkin or spent late nights imagining how it will change the world. Then comes the question: Should I build an MVP ? It sounds like the obvious first step. But here is the honest truth: a Minimum Viable Product isn’t right for everyone at least, not right away. Before you hire developers or start writing a spec sheet, it helps to ask yourself three specific questions. The answers will tell you whether you should. 1. Do you know the one thing your product must do? An MVP isn’t a smaller version of your big vision. It isn’t your full app with half the features missing. A true MVP is a learning tool. If you can’t articulate your product’s single core job in one sentence, you aren’t ready for an MVP. You’re still in the problem-definition stage. And that’s okay - that’s exactly where strategy comes in before a single line of code is written. 2. Are you trying to build, or are you trying to learn? This is the most common t...
Building an MVP is one of the most critical steps you’ll take as a founder, but if you’re non-technical, the process can feel like standing at the edge of a room where everyone speaks without a common perspective. The biggest concern I hear from entrepreneurs isn’t whether their idea is good - it’s whether they can execute it without a technical co-founder. The short answer is yes, and the better news is that the path is much clearer today than it was even a few years ago. The secret isn’t trying to learn to code overnight or convincing a busy engineer to join your pre-revenue vision. It’s about shifting your mindset from “I need a CTO” to “I need a strategic MVP developer .” When you look at successful startups that began as MVPs, many of them were built by external teams long before they had a formal technical co-founder. What those founders did well was approach the relationship not as clients hiring vendors, but as CEOs partnering with a product and engineering arm. To do this conf...