Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with what seemed like a dream project: build a comprehensive two-sided marketplace platform with a substantial budget. The technical challenge was exciting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date.
I said no.
Not because the money wasn't good, or because I couldn't deliver. I turned it down because I knew they were about to make the same expensive mistake I see founders make over and over: building the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Here's what most people don't understand about MVPs in 2025: your first MVP shouldn't be a product at all. While everyone's obsessing over AI tools and no-code platforms that can build "anything quickly," they're missing the fundamental question: what should you actually build, and for whom?
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why I reject high-paying platform projects (and what I recommend instead)
The counterintuitive MVP approach that validates demand before building
How to build a lovable MVP in days, not months
The distribution-first framework that ensures your MVP actually gets users
Real examples of successful "pre-product" validation strategies
If you're considering building an MVP or have been struggling to validate your idea, this approach will save you months of development time and thousands in wasted resources.
Industry Reality
The MVP Advice Everyone Gives (And Why It's Backwards)
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through any founder community, and you'll hear the same MVP advice repeated like gospel:
"Build fast, launch early" - Use no-code tools and AI to rapidly prototype your idea
"Start with the core feature" - Strip everything down to the essential functionality
"Get feedback and iterate" - Release something basic and improve based on user input
"Fail fast, fail cheap" - Test your assumptions quickly with minimal investment
"Build something people want" - Focus on solving a real problem for real users
This advice isn't wrong—it's just incomplete. The problem is that it assumes you already know who wants your solution and where to find them. It treats building as the main challenge when distribution is actually the harder problem.
The result? Founders spend months building "minimum viable products" that never find viable users. They create beautiful solutions to real problems that nobody discovers. They optimize for development speed while completely ignoring distribution velocity.
Even with AI and no-code tools making building easier than ever, the constraint isn't development—it's knowing what to build and for whom. Distribution beats product quality every time. You can have the most elegant, feature-complete MVP in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, it's worthless.
The conventional MVP approach puts the cart before the horse. It optimizes for building when it should optimize for learning.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When that client came to me with their marketplace idea, they had everything mapped out: user flows, wireframes, feature lists, even potential revenue models. They'd done market research and identified a real problem. The budget was there, the timeline was realistic, and the technical requirements were within my capabilities.
But one statement revealed the fundamental flaw in their approach: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, and no proof of demand. Just enthusiasm and a budget. They wanted to spend three months building a complex platform to "test" whether people wanted it.
This reminded me of similar situations I'd encountered as a freelancer. I'd seen startups burn through runway building products that never found product-market fit. I'd watched founders perfect features that nobody ended up using. The pattern was always the same: build first, validate later.
The client was treating their MVP like a product launch rather than a learning experiment. They were optimizing for completeness rather than speed of validation. Most importantly, they were confusing building capability with market demand.
Here's what I've learned from working with dozens of startups: if you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build, not three months. If it takes longer than that, you're not testing—you're building.
So I made them an offer they initially hated but eventually thanked me for: instead of building their platform, I'd help them validate their idea using manual processes and direct customer contact. No code, no complex integrations, no three-month timeline—just direct market validation.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly what I recommended to my client instead of building their marketplace platform:
Day 1: Create Your "Product" Without Code
We built a simple landing page explaining their value proposition. Not a working marketplace—just a clear description of what they planned to solve and for whom. This took four hours, not four weeks.
Week 1: Start Manual Outreach
Instead of building user registration flows, we created targeted lists of potential users on both sides of their marketplace. We reached out directly via LinkedIn and email, explaining the concept and asking if they'd be interested.
Week 2-4: Manual Matching Process
When we found interested parties on both sides, we facilitated connections manually through email and WhatsApp. No automated matching algorithms—just human-powered introductions. This let us understand the real workflow and pain points.
Month 2: Prove Demand Before Automation
Only after successfully completing manual transactions did we consider building automation. By this point, we had real users, validated demand, and understood the actual workflow requirements.
The Key Insight: Your MVP Should Be Your Marketing Process
The breakthrough came when we realized that distribution and validation should happen before development, not after. The "product" wasn't the platform—it was the process of connecting people and facilitating value exchange.
Building the Minimum Viable Audience First
We focused on building relationships with potential users before building features for them. This meant:
Direct conversations with target customers
Manual facilitation of desired outcomes
Understanding real workflows vs. assumed workflows
Building demand before building supply
The Distribution-First MVP Framework
This experience crystallized my approach to lovable MVPs:
Audience before product: Find and engage your target users first
Manual before automated: Prove the process works by hand
Relationship before transaction: Build trust before asking for money
Learning before building: Validate assumptions through direct contact
Validation Speed
Don't spend months testing what you can validate in days through direct customer contact
Distribution First
Build your audience and prove demand before you build your product features
Manual Scaling
Manually deliver your solution to understand the real workflow requirements
Learning Velocity
Optimize for speed of learning about customers rather than speed of building features
The results spoke for themselves. Within six weeks, my client had:
Validated real demand from both sides of their marketplace
Facilitated actual transactions manually before building automation
Built relationships with early users who became advocates
Understood real workflows vs. their initial assumptions
Identified the highest-value features based on manual process pain points
More importantly, they discovered that their original feature set was about 70% wrong. The manual process revealed what users actually needed versus what they thought they needed. This saved months of development time and prevented building the wrong solution.
When they eventually did build their platform six months later, they had a waiting list of validated users, proven demand, and a clear understanding of product requirements. The platform launched with immediate traction because distribution came first.
The total time investment for validation: 6 weeks. The total cost: virtually nothing except time and outreach effort. Compare that to 3 months of development with no guarantee of user adoption.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I learned from this approach to lovable MVP building:
Distribution is harder than building: In the age of AI and no-code, the constraint isn't development—it's knowing what to build and finding users who want it.
Manual processes reveal real requirements: You can't understand user workflows until you manually facilitate them.
Audience before features: Build relationships with potential users before building features for them.
Validation velocity matters more than development velocity: Learn fast, build slow.
Your MVP should be your marketing process: The first "product" should be proving you can connect with and serve your target market.
Money talks, everything else walks: People saying they'd use something is different from people paying for something.
Start with distribution, not development: Figure out how you'll reach customers before figuring out what to build for them.
The most important insight: in 2025, the ability to build isn't the constraint—the ability to distribute is. Your MVP strategy should reflect this reality.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups specifically:
Start with manual customer success to understand workflow requirements
Build email list before building features
Use existing tools (Airtable, Notion) to manually deliver value first
Focus on solving one workflow extremely well before expanding
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses:
Test product demand through pre-orders or waitlists
Start with manual fulfillment to understand operational requirements
Build audience through content before launching products
Use existing marketplaces to validate demand before building your own store