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 like Lovable. They'd heard these tools could build anything quickly and cheaply. They weren't wrong about the technical capabilities, but their core statement revealed the fundamental problem: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build - not three months. This is where most founders get trapped in the "build first, validate later" mindset that kills promising startups before they even start.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why a lovable MVP isn't about the product at all
The one-day validation framework that saves months of development
How to build demand before building features
The real difference between validation and building
When to actually start coding (spoiler: much later than you think)
This approach isn't just theory - it's what I recommend to every client who wants to "test their idea" with a complex build. Let me show you what actually works.
Industry Reality
What every founder believes about MVPs
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through ProductHunt, and you'll hear the same advice repeated everywhere: "Build an MVP to test your idea." The conventional wisdom sounds logical enough.
Here's what most founders think an MVP should be:
A simplified version of their full vision - Strip out advanced features but keep the core functionality
Quick to build - Use no-code tools to get something live in weeks instead of months
Feature-complete enough to be useful - Users should be able to accomplish their main goal
Professionally presented - Clean design and smooth user experience to make a good first impression
Scalable foundation - Built in a way that allows for future feature additions
This approach exists because it feels productive. Building something tangible gives founders a sense of progress. Investors can see and interact with a product. The team feels like they're making real advancement toward their vision.
The problem? You're optimizing for the wrong thing. Most "MVPs" are actually just feature-light versions of the final product. They require significant time and resources to build properly, and by the time you launch, you're already committed to a specific solution.
Even with modern no-code tools and AI assistance, building a functional platform still takes weeks or months. During that time, you're making hundreds of assumptions about what users want, how they behave, and whether they'll actually pay for your solution.
The real issue isn't technical - it's philosophical. Most founders confuse building with validating, when these should be completely separate phases.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When that marketplace client came to me, I recognized the pattern immediately. I'd seen it dozens of times before - smart founders with solid ideas who were about to waste months building something nobody wanted.
Their situation was textbook: they had identified a real problem in their industry, sketched out a compelling solution, and were ready to invest serious money in development. They had:
No existing audience
No validated customer base
No proof of demand
Just an idea and enthusiasm
The platform they wanted to build was technically feasible - a two-sided marketplace connecting service providers with businesses. Similar to Upwork but for a specific niche. They'd done market research, identified gaps in existing solutions, and were convinced they had a winner.
But here's what concerned me: when I asked about their validation process, they pointed to their planned product features. When I asked about their first customers, they talked about their go-to-market strategy post-launch. When I asked how they'd test demand, they said they'd know once the platform was live.
This is backwards thinking. They were treating the product as the validation method, when validation should happen before any product exists.
I'd learned this lesson the hard way from previous clients. I'd built beautiful, functional platforms that launched to crickets. Perfect execution of the wrong solution is still wrong.
So instead of taking their money and building what they asked for, I challenged their approach entirely. The conversation that followed became the foundation for what I now call the "lovable MVP" framework - and it has nothing to do with building software.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's what I told that marketplace client, and what I now recommend to every founder who wants to "test their idea" with development:
Your first MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product.
Instead of spending months building a platform, I proposed a radically different approach:
Day 1: Create a simple landing page
Not a functional platform - just a clear explanation of the value proposition. One page explaining what problem you solve, for whom, and how people can get started. No complex features, no user accounts, no payment processing.
Week 1: Start manual outreach
Reach out directly to potential users on both sides of the marketplace. Don't pitch a product - pitch a service. "We're manually connecting service providers with businesses. Interested?" This tests demand without requiring any technology.
Week 2-4: Manually match supply and demand
Use email, WhatsApp, or even spreadsheets to connect providers with businesses. Charge for successful matches. This validates that people will actually pay for your solution and reveals how the matching process really works.
Month 2: Only after proving demand, consider automation
Once you've manually facilitated 20-50 successful transactions, you understand the real workflow. Now you can build technology to automate what you know works, rather than guessing what might work.
The key insight: Distribution and validation come before development. If you can't manually create the value your platform promises, automating it won't help.
For that specific client, this meant:
Testing demand first - Could they get businesses to pay for manual matching services?
Understanding the real workflow - What does successful matching actually look like?
Building relationships - Creating a network of providers and customers before building software
Learning the economics - What pricing model actually works for all parties?
This approach flips the traditional MVP model completely. Instead of building to test, you test to build. Instead of hoping people will use your software, you prove they'll pay for your solution first.
Manual Validation
Test demand before building anything - use spreadsheets and personal outreach to validate your core hypothesis
Real Workflow
Understand how your solution actually works in practice through hands-on facilitation
Network Effects
Build relationships with early users who become advocates when you eventually launch technology
Economics First
Prove your pricing model and unit economics work before investing in development infrastructure
The results speak for themselves, though not in the way most founders expect. This approach doesn't generate the typical startup metrics - no user growth charts or feature adoption rates.
Instead, you get something far more valuable: certainty that your solution works before you've invested significant time or money in building it.
In the case of that marketplace client, they discovered something crucial within the first month. The manual matching process revealed that successful connections required much more context and relationship-building than they'd assumed. A simple automated matching algorithm wouldn't have worked.
More importantly, they learned that businesses were willing to pay premium prices for high-quality, personally vetted matches. This insight completely changed their eventual product strategy and pricing model.
The timeline looked like this:
Week 1: Landing page live, first outreach campaigns started
Week 3: First paid match facilitated manually
Month 2: 10+ successful matches, clear understanding of workflow
Month 3: Defined pricing model and service process
Most importantly, they had paying customers and proven demand before writing a single line of code. When they eventually did build their platform, they were automating a process they knew worked, not testing whether it might work.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience reinforced a principle I now share with every client considering an MVP: In the age of AI and no-code, the constraint isn't building - it's knowing what to build and for whom.
Here are the key lessons from this approach:
Manual processes reveal hidden complexity - What seems simple in theory often involves nuanced decision-making that's hard to automate
Early customers become your product team - People paying for manual services give much better feedback than free trial users
Pricing models emerge naturally - You discover what people will actually pay through real transactions
Distribution is more important than features - Finding customers is harder than building products
Technology should automate proven processes - Build to scale what already works, not to test what might work
Speed to market beats speed to build - You can start serving customers immediately with manual processes
Validation requires real money - People will say they love your idea, but payment is the only honest signal
The biggest mistake I see founders make is treating building and validating as the same activity. They're completely different skills requiring different approaches. Building is about execution; validating is about learning.
A truly lovable MVP is one that people actually want and will pay for - and you can prove that without building anything at all.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups:
Start with manual service delivery before building automation
Use spreadsheets and existing tools to validate core workflows
Focus on solving one specific problem extremely well
Get paying customers before writing code
For your Ecommerce store
For Ecommerce businesses:
Test product demand through pre-orders or waitlists
Validate pricing through limited manual sales
Understand customer acquisition costs before scaling
Build supply chain relationships before inventory investment