Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last year, a potential client approached me with what seemed like a goldmine opportunity. They wanted to build a two-sided marketplace platform with a substantial budget attached. The technical challenge was interesting, and it would have been one of my biggest projects to date.
I said no.
Not because I couldn't deliver—technically, you can build complex platforms with modern tools like Bubble. But their core statement revealed a fundamental problem: "We want to see if our idea is worth pursuing."
They had enthusiasm, a decent budget, and big dreams. What they didn't have was any proof that people actually wanted what they were building. No existing audience, no validated customer base, no evidence of demand. Just an idea and the assumption that if they built it well enough, users would come.
This experience crystallized something I'd been thinking about for years: in 2025, the constraint isn't building—it's knowing what to build and for whom. Here's what you'll learn from my approach to MVP validation:
Why your first MVP should take 1 day, not 3 months
The difference between testing demand and testing features
When Bubble becomes the right choice (hint: it's not day one)
How to validate marketplace ideas without building a marketplace
Why distribution beats development every time
Let me take you through the framework I use to help startups validate ideas before they build—and how AI tools and platforms like Bubble fit into the bigger picture.
Industry Reality
What founders hear about MVPs everywhere
Walk into any startup accelerator or browse through product development blogs, and you'll hear the same MVP gospel repeated everywhere:
"Start with an MVP to test your idea"
"Build fast, iterate quickly"
"Use no-code tools to speed up development"
"Get your product in front of users ASAP"
"Fail fast, learn faster"
This advice isn't wrong, but it's dangerously incomplete. The industry has created this narrative where the MVP is always a simplified version of your product. Everyone talks about Dropbox's video demo or Zappos' manual inventory management, but they miss the deeper lesson.
Most founders interpret "build an MVP" as "build a basic version of my product." So they fire up Bubble, Webflow, or whatever tool they prefer, and start building features. They think they're being lean, but they're still operating under the assumption that their idea is worth building.
Here's where conventional wisdom falls short: it conflates testing your ability to build with testing whether you should build at all. These are completely different problems requiring completely different approaches.
The real question isn't "Can I build this quickly?" It's "Do people actually want this?" And you can answer that second question without building anything that resembles your final product.
This is why I stopped taking projects where clients want to "test their idea" by building a product. Instead, I help them test their idea by validating demand first.
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 were excited about the no-code revolution. They'd heard that tools like Bubble could build anything quickly and cheaply—and they weren't wrong about the technical capabilities.
But I had a different conversation with them. Instead of discussing their platform requirements, I asked about their customers. The more we talked, the clearer it became that they were trying to solve a problem they assumed existed, not one they'd validated.
Here's what I told them that initially shocked them: "If you're truly testing market demand, your MVP should take one day to build—not three months."
I've seen this pattern repeatedly. Founders get excited about building because building feels productive. It feels like progress. But building without validation is just expensive procrastination.
The marketplace client had zero existing audience. They had no distribution channel. They had no proof that their target users even recognized the problem they were trying to solve. Yet they wanted to spend months building a complex platform to "test" their idea.
This reminded me of other clients I'd worked with who fell into the same trap. One SaaS founder I'd worked with previously spent 6 months building features before realizing that their customer acquisition strategy was fundamentally flawed. Another e-commerce client built an entire inventory management system before discovering their target market was already well-served by existing solutions.
The pattern was always the same: founders were treating product development as market validation. They were confusing the ability to build with the need to build.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the approach I recommended to the marketplace client—and the framework I now use with every startup that comes to me wanting to "test their idea":
Day 1: Create a Simple Landing Page
Not in Bubble. Not even in Webflow. I had them create a basic Notion doc or simple HTML page explaining their value proposition. No fancy design, no complex features. Just clear communication of what problem they solve and for whom.
Week 1: Manual Outreach and Validation
Instead of building user registration flows, they started manually reaching out to potential users on both sides of their marketplace. LinkedIn messages, cold emails, industry forums—whatever it took to get real humans talking about the problem.
Week 2-4: Manual Matchmaking
When they found people who expressed genuine interest, they facilitated connections manually. Email introductions, WhatsApp groups, even phone calls. This sounds like it doesn't scale, but that's exactly the point—you want to prove demand before you worry about scale.
Month 2: Only After Proving Demand
Only after they had evidence that people would actually use their service did we discuss building automation. This is when platforms like Bubble become valuable—not for testing ideas, but for scaling proven concepts.
The key insight: your MVP should be your marketing and sales process, not your product. Distribution and validation come before development.
This approach applies whether you're building a marketplace, a SaaS tool, or any other product. The question isn't "What's the simplest version I can build?" It's "What's the simplest way I can test if people want this?"
Too many founders skip this step because manual processes feel "unscalable." But you're not trying to scale yet—you're trying to validate. There's a huge difference.
Validation First
Test demand before you build anything. Manual processes reveal real user behavior better than any prototype.
Distribution Wins
Focus on proving you can reach customers before proving you can build features. Most ideas fail on distribution, not development.
Bubble's Sweet Spot
Perfect for scaling proven concepts, not testing unproven ideas. Use it after validation, not before.
Manual Insights
Hand-holding early users teaches you things no automated system can capture about real needs and behaviors.
The marketplace client ended up following my advice, though not immediately. They initially pushed back, arguing that manual processes wouldn't give them "real" data about user behavior.
But after three weeks of manual outreach and connection attempts, they discovered something crucial: the problem they thought they were solving wasn't actually the main pain point for their target users. Through real conversations, they uncovered a different, more pressing need.
This discovery saved them months of development time and thousands of dollars. More importantly, it led them to a business model that actually worked—one they never would have found by building their original platform idea.
This experience reinforced something I've observed across dozens of client projects: the most valuable insights come from human interaction, not user analytics. When you're manually facilitating connections or sales, you hear the real language people use, the actual objections they have, and the genuine enthusiasm (or lack thereof) in their responses.
That's information you can't get from tracking pixels or conversion funnels. It's the kind of insight that actually determines whether your business will succeed.
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 helping startups navigate the MVP vs validation dilemma:
Manual First, Automate Later: Every automated system should be based on a manual process you've already proven works. If you can't do it manually, you can't do it at scale.
Talk to Users, Don't Track Users: Analytics tell you what happened, conversations tell you why. In the early stages, why matters more than what.
Demand Validation ≠ Product Validation: Proving people want a solution isn't the same as proving they want your solution. Test the problem first, then test your approach.
Distribution Is Your Real MVP: The hardest part isn't building a product—it's finding customers who care about your product. Test distribution channels before building features.
Bubble's Role: Platforms like Bubble excel at turning validated concepts into scalable products. They're tools for growth, not tools for discovery.
Uncomfortable Conversations Are Data: If potential users seem lukewarm or confused during validation calls, that's valuable information. Don't dismiss it as "they just don't understand the vision."
Speed of Learning > Speed of Building: It's better to invalidate a bad idea in a week than to build a great product for a nonexistent market over months.
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 processes before building automation
Use direct sales conversations to validate feature priorities
Test pricing and packaging through real sales attempts
Build Bubble prototypes only after confirming sustainable unit economics
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses:
Test product-market fit through pre-orders or manual fulfillment
Validate supply chain relationships before building inventory systems
Use social media or marketplaces for initial sales validation
Build automated systems only after proving consistent demand