Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with an exciting opportunity: build a two-sided marketplace platform. The budget was substantial, the technical challenge was interesting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date.
I said no.
Here's the thing—they came to me excited about the no-code revolution and new AI tools. They'd heard these tools could build anything quickly and cheaply. They weren't wrong technically. But their core statement revealed the massive red flag: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
They had no existing audience, no validated customer base, no proof of demand. Just an idea and enthusiasm. Sound familiar?
This experience forced me to confront a fundamental truth about MVPs that most founders get completely wrong. The problem isn't building—it's knowing what to build and for whom.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why your first MVP shouldn't be a product at all
The fatal assumption that kills 90% of MVP projects
My framework for validating demand before building
Real examples of MVPs that succeeded by ignoring "best practices"
The difference between testing your idea and testing your market
Let's dive into why most MVP strategies fail—and what actually works in 2025.
Industry Reality
What the startup world preaches about MVPs
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through Y Combinator's advice, and you'll hear the same MVP mantra repeated everywhere:
"Build fast, launch early, iterate quickly."
The conventional wisdom goes like this:
Start with a basic version of your product idea
Build it as quickly as possible using no-code tools or minimal code
Launch to get user feedback and validate your assumptions
Iterate based on usage data and user complaints
Scale what works and kill what doesn't
This advice sounds logical. It's been reinforced by success stories from companies like Dropbox (famous for their video MVP) and Airbnb (simple website connecting hosts and guests).
The problem? These success stories focus on the wrong part of the equation.
Dropbox didn't succeed because they built quickly—they succeeded because Drew Houston was solving his own problem and had deep expertise in the technical challenges. Airbnb worked because the founders manually acquired their first customers and provided white-glove service.
The conventional wisdom skips the most critical step: proving demand exists before you build anything. Most founders hear "build fast" and jump straight into development, assuming that speed of execution will somehow validate their market fit.
This backwards approach is why 70% of startups fail not because of execution problems, but because they built something nobody wanted in the first place.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this potential client came to me with their marketplace idea, I recognized all the warning signs immediately. They were following the standard startup playbook to the letter:
"We've done our market research" (translation: they'd read some industry reports and talked to a few friends)
"We know there's demand" (translation: they'd found some statistics about market size)
"We just need to build the MVP to test our hypothesis" (translation: they wanted to spend months building before talking to actual customers)
The red flag that stopped me cold? When I asked about their target customers, they described their "ideal user" in broad demographic terms but couldn't name a single person who had this specific problem.
I've seen this pattern dozens of times working with SaaS and e-commerce clients. The founders who succeed aren't the ones who build fastest—they're the ones who validate demand most thoroughly before writing a single line of code.
This client had fallen into what I call the "Build It and They Will Come" trap. They were so excited about the solution they wanted to create that they'd skipped the fundamental question: does this problem actually exist in the wild?
Here's what really bothered me about their approach: they were treating their MVP like a science experiment when they should have been treating it like a sales process. They wanted to "test if their idea works" instead of "prove that people will pay for this solution."
I knew that if I built what they were asking for, we'd spend 3 months creating a beautiful, functional platform that nobody would use. I'd seen this movie before, and it never ends well.
So instead of taking their money and building what they asked for, I told them something that initially shocked them but ultimately saved them months of wasted time and budget.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly what I told them, and the framework I now use with every client who comes to me with an "MVP idea":
"If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build—not three months."
I walked them through my Validation-First MVP Framework:
Phase 1: The One-Day MVP (Week 1)
Instead of building their platform, I recommended they create a simple landing page or Notion document explaining their value proposition. No backend, no user accounts, no complex features. Just a clear explanation of the problem they solve and how they solve it.
The goal wasn't to look impressive—it was to start conversations with potential customers immediately.
Phase 2: Manual Market Validation (Weeks 2-4)
Rather than waiting for users to find their platform, I told them to actively hunt down their target market. This meant:
Direct outreach to potential users on both sides of their marketplace
Phone calls to understand their current solutions and pain points
Manual matching of supply and demand via email or WhatsApp
Documenting every interaction and objection
Phase 3: Proof of Demand (Month 2)
Only after manually facilitating successful transactions between their target users would we consider building automation. The key metrics weren't app downloads or signup rates—they were completed transactions and repeat usage.
The Critical Shift: Your MVP Should Test Distribution, Not Development
I explained that in the age of AI and no-code tools, the constraint isn't building—it's knowing what to build and for whom. Anyone can create a functional app in weeks. But creating an app that people actually want and will pay for? That requires understanding your market first.
This framework flips the traditional MVP approach on its head. Instead of building first and hoping for users, you find users first and build only what they'll actually pay for.
The Reality Check
What I tell every founder: "If you need 3 months to test demand, you're not testing demand—you're building a product and hoping."
Manual First
Start with WhatsApp, email, and phone calls. If you can't manually facilitate your solution, automation won't save you.
Distribution Test
Your MVP should validate your ability to reach customers, not your ability to build features.
Evidence Required
Real transactions with real money. Beta signups and "I would use this" responses don't count as validation.
The outcome was exactly what I expected, but more dramatic than even I anticipated.
Within two weeks of manual outreach, they discovered something that would have taken months to learn through a built platform: their target market had already solved this problem in a completely different way.
The "pain point" they thought they were addressing turned out to be a minor inconvenience that people had workarounds for. More importantly, the transactions they wanted to facilitate were happening, but through established relationships and trust networks that a new platform couldn't easily replace.
Instead of spending $20,000+ and three months building a platform nobody wanted, they spent two weeks and discovered their market reality. This led them to pivot to a completely different approach that actually addressed a real, urgent problem.
Six months later, they had a profitable business—but it looked nothing like their original marketplace idea. The manual validation process had revealed the actual opportunity hiding beneath their initial assumptions.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I've learned from this experience and dozens of similar client conversations:
Your first MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product. If you can't manually acquire and serve customers, automation won't fix that problem.
"Would you use this?" is a useless question. The only validation that matters is "Will you pay for this right now?" with money changing hands.
Market research is not market validation. Reading reports about industry size doesn't tell you if your specific solution resonates with real people.
Speed of building is irrelevant if you're building the wrong thing. Three months building the perfect solution to a problem that doesn't exist is worse than three weeks proving demand for an imperfect solution.
Your biggest risk isn't technical—it's customer acquisition. Most MVPs fail because founders can't find and convince customers, not because the product doesn't work.
Manual processes reveal assumptions you didn't know you had. Every step you automate is an assumption about how customers behave. Test those assumptions manually first.
Distribution strategy should come before product development. Knowing how you'll reach customers is more valuable than knowing how you'll build features.
The hardest pill to swallow? Sometimes the best outcome is discovering your original idea won't work before you build it, not after.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
Start with a landing page explaining your value prop, not a working product
Manually onboard your first 10 customers before building any automation
Focus on customer acquisition strategy over product features in your initial validation
Test willingness to pay with pre-orders or deposits, not just interest surveys
For your Ecommerce store
Validate demand with manual fulfillment before building inventory management systems
Start with a curated product selection rather than a full marketplace approach
Test your supply chain manually with real orders before automating procurement
Focus on repeat purchase validation over single transaction metrics