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. Most freelancers would have jumped at the opportunity. I said no.
Here's why that decision taught me everything about how MVP iteration should actually work—and why most founders are doing it completely backwards.
The client had fallen into the same trap I see everywhere: they wanted to "test if their idea works" by building a complex platform first. But here's what I learned from years of working on SaaS projects and helping startups validate ideas: if you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build, not three months.
In this playbook, I'll share the exact approach that's saved my clients thousands of dollars and months of development time:
Why the "build first, validate later" approach is killing startups
The 24-hour MVP framework that actually tests demand
How to iterate from manual processes to automation systematically
Real examples of AI-powered MVPs that worked
When to actually start building (and when to keep validating)
Reality Check
What the startup world gets wrong about MVPs
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through Product Hunt, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like a mantra: "Build fast, fail fast, iterate quickly." Sounds great, right? The problem is how most people interpret this.
Here's what the industry typically recommends for MVP development:
Use no-code tools to build quickly - Platforms like Bubble, Webflow, or Airtable to get something live fast
Launch with core features - Strip down to essentials but still build a functional product
Gather user feedback - Get real users on the platform and see what they say
Iterate based on data - Use analytics and feedback to improve the product
Scale what works - Double down on features that show traction
This conventional wisdom exists because it feels logical and actionable. It gives founders a clear path forward and makes the scary process of starting a business feel manageable. The problem? This approach assumes you already have product-market fit.
Here's where this falls short in practice: even with no-code tools, building a "minimal" two-sided marketplace still takes weeks or months. By the time you launch, you've already committed significant time and resources to an unproven hypothesis. You're not testing demand—you're testing your ability to build something people might want.
The real issue is that most founders are optimizing for the wrong thing. They're optimizing for speed of development when they should be optimizing for speed of learning. There's a massive difference, and it's costing startups millions of dollars and years of runway.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When that marketplace client came to me, they had it all figured out—or so they thought. They'd identified their target market, researched competitors, and even had some potential users express interest. The budget was there, the timeline was aggressive, and they were ready to move fast.
Their exact words: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing." That single sentence revealed everything wrong with their approach.
They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, and no proof of demand beyond conversations that sounded promising. But they wanted to spend months building a complex platform to "test" their hypothesis. I realized I'd be taking their money to help them fail expensively.
Here's what I told them instead: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build—not three months."
The conversation that followed was uncomfortable. They'd been planning this elaborate platform with user profiles, matching algorithms, payment processing, messaging systems—the whole nine yards. In their minds, anything less wouldn't be a "real" test of their concept.
I'd seen this pattern before with other clients. The ones who succeeded didn't start by building—they started by selling. They validated demand manually before they wrote a single line of code or configured a single no-code workflow.
This wasn't theoretical advice for me. I'd worked on SaaS landing pages that converted before the product existed, e-commerce stores that took orders before they had inventory systems, and service businesses that operated entirely through spreadsheets and email before they built custom platforms.
The client was skeptical. How could a simple landing page test whether people would use a complex marketplace? How could manual processes validate an automated platform? These are the wrong questions—and asking them reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what MVP iteration should accomplish.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of building their platform, here's exactly what I recommended—and what I now use with every client who wants to validate a new concept quickly:
Day 1: Create Your Marketing MVP
Your first MVP isn't your product—it's your marketing and sales process. I had them create a simple landing page explaining their value proposition. Not a functional platform, just a clear description of what they wanted to build and why it mattered. This took four hours, not four months.
The landing page included a waitlist signup and a "Get Started" button that led to a Calendly link. No complex matching algorithms, no user profiles, no payment processing. Just a way for people to express genuine interest by giving their email and scheduling a call.
Week 1: Manual Validation
With the landing page live, we drove some basic traffic through social media and targeted outreach. But here's the crucial part: when people clicked "Get Started," they didn't encounter a sophisticated platform. They got a human conversation.
During these calls, we didn't just ask whether people would use the platform—we asked them to commit to something right now. Could we manually match them with someone in our network? Would they pay a small fee for a hand-curated introduction? Would they refer others if we solved their problem today?
Week 2-4: Prove Demand Before Building
This is where most founders want to jump straight to development. Don't. Instead, we spent a month manually operating their "platform" through email, WhatsApp, and spreadsheets. We matched supply and demand manually, facilitated transactions through existing payment tools, and managed the entire customer experience without writing code.
The results were telling. Within two weeks, we had clear data on whether people would actually pay, what they'd pay for, and what their biggest friction points were. More importantly, we discovered that their original concept needed significant adjustments—insights that would have been expensive to implement after building a full platform.
Month 2: Smart Automation
Only after proving demand with manual processes did we start building automation. But we didn't build everything at once. We identified the highest-value, most time-consuming manual tasks and automated those first.
For this client, that meant building a simple Airtable database to track matches and automating follow-up emails through Zapier. Still no custom platform, still no complex user interface—just smart automation of proven processes.
This approach works because your MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product. Distribution and validation come before development, always.
Rapid Testing
Test concepts in hours, not weeks, using landing pages and manual processes
Market Validation
Focus on proving demand through actual commitments, not just interest surveys
Smart Automation
Automate only proven manual processes, starting with the highest-impact tasks first
Build When Ready
Transition to development only after validating demand and refining the core value proposition
The marketplace client initially resisted this approach, but the results spoke for themselves. Within 30 days of manual operations, we had:
47 qualified leads who expressed genuine interest by scheduling calls
12 paying customers who paid for manually facilitated matches
$2,400 in revenue before building any platform
Critical insights that changed their entire business model
But here's what really mattered: we discovered that their original concept was wrong. The market didn't want a complex marketplace—they wanted curated, high-touch matching with expert guidance. This insight would have cost them months and thousands of dollars to discover after building a full platform.
Instead of building elaborate user profiles and matching algorithms, they needed to focus on expert curation and relationship management. Instead of a self-serve platform, they needed a high-touch service with smart automation behind the scenes.
The timeline comparison is stark: traditional MVP approach would have taken 3-6 months to build and launch, then additional time to discover product-market fit issues. Our approach took 30 days to validate demand and identify the real opportunity.
This experience reinforced something I'd seen across multiple SaaS projects: the businesses that scale fastest aren't the ones that build fastest—they're the ones that learn fastest.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After applying this framework across dozens of client projects, here are the key lessons that consistently emerge:
Manual processes reveal real user needs - You can't learn from analytics what you learn from conversations
Complexity is the enemy of validation - The more features you build, the harder it is to know what's working
Your first MVP should be your sales process - Can you sell it before you build it?
Automate proven processes, not assumptions - Only build what you've successfully done manually
Real commitment beats positive feedback - Will they pay, refer, or invest time right now?
Speed of learning beats speed of building - Get insights fast, build when you're confident
Most "MVPs" are still too complex - If it takes more than a week, you're probably overthinking it
The biggest mistake I see founders make is treating no-code tools as a license to build complex systems quickly. But complexity is still complexity, whether it's coded or configured. The goal isn't to build fast—it's to learn fast.
This approach works best for concepts that involve matching, curation, or service delivery where human insight adds value. It works less well for purely automated systems or products where the technology itself is the differentiator.
What I'd do differently: Start even simpler. Even a landing page can be too much initial investment. Sometimes a social media post or a simple email to your network is the right first "MVP." The key is matching your validation method to your confidence level.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
Start with a simple landing page and manual demos before building features
Use tools like Calendly and Loom to validate demand through conversations
Automate onboarding and support workflows only after proving manual processes work
For your Ecommerce store
Test product concepts with pre-orders before investing in inventory
Use dropshipping or manual fulfillment to validate demand patterns
Build automated systems only after proving customer acquisition channels