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How to build your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) quickly. What to skip, what to keep, and how "good enough" beats "perfect."
An MVP is the simplest version of your idea that people can actually use. It's not half-baked — it's focused. You build the one thing that matters, ship it, and learn what users actually want before building everything else.
The golden rule: If you're not a little embarrassed by your first version, you waited too long to launch.
These are real features, but they're not needed on day one. Add them after you have users:
User accounts & login
Unless users need to save data, skip auth. Use a waitlist email form instead.
Payment processing
Validate demand first. Take payments manually or use a Stripe payment link.
Dark mode
Nice to have, not need to have. Pick one theme and stick with it.
Mobile app
A responsive website works on phones. Don't build a native app until you have traction.
Admin dashboard
Manage data directly in your database (Supabase dashboard) until you outgrow it.
Internationalization
Launch in one language. Translate later when you have international users asking for it.
Animations & micro-interactions
Clean and functional beats fancy and slow. Polish after you validate.
Custom email templates
Plain text emails work fine at first. Beautiful emails don't increase signups.
Responsive design
Over 50% of traffic is mobile. Your site must work on phones.
Fast loading
If your page takes 5 seconds to load, people leave. Optimize images, use Next.js.
Clear value proposition
Visitors need to understand what you offer in 5 seconds. Nail your headline.
One call-to-action
What's the ONE thing you want visitors to do? Make it obvious.
Working contact/feedback method
Email link, form, or Twitter DM. Users need a way to reach you.
Basic SEO
Title tags, meta descriptions, and an og:image. Takes 10 minutes, helps forever.
One landing page with your value prop, features, and a CTA. Use AI to generate it in 30 minutes.
Whatever makes your product useful — the waitlist form, the calculator, the search, the tool.
Fix mobile layout, add meta tags, connect your domain, and deploy. Done.
Post on Twitter/X, share in communities, tell friends. Your first users are out there.
Some of the biggest products in the world started as laughably simple MVPs. Here's proof that starting small works:
Just status updates. No replies, no retweets, no likes, no images. You could only post 'what are you doing?' and read what others posted.
A global real-time communication platform with billions of posts, live video, spaces, and algorithmic feeds.
One apartment in San Francisco with photos on a basic website. The founders rented out air mattresses in their living room to conference attendees.
Millions of listings in 220+ countries, experiences, luxury rentals, and a hospitality empire.
A demo video. Before building the product, they made a 3-minute screencast showing how it would work. The waitlist went from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight.
A cloud storage platform used by 700 million people with team collaboration, e-signatures, and AI features.
You have an idea for a recipe-sharing app. Instead of building the whole app, you create a single landing page with a headline, three feature highlights, and an email signup form connected to Supabase. You deploy it to Vercel, share the link on Twitter, and collect 50 signups in the first day. Now you know people want it — and you can start building the real thing with confidence.
Build this with AI
"Build a minimal waitlist landing page for a recipe-sharing app called 'RecipeBox'. Include: a centered hero with the headline 'Share Recipes, Not Cookbooks' in bold, a subtitle explaining the app in one sentence, 3 feature cards with icons (save recipes, share with friends, meal planning), an email signup form that stores emails in a Supabase table called 'waitlist' with columns for email and created_at, and a simple footer. Use Next.js and Tailwind CSS. Keep it clean — no login, no dashboard, just the landing page."
Build an MVP landing page
"Build a minimal landing page for [your product name]. Include: a hero with headline and subtitle, 3 key features with icons, a waitlist email signup form that stores emails in Supabase, social proof section (e.g., '500+ people on the waitlist'), and a simple footer. Use Tailwind CSS, keep it clean and fast. No login, no dashboard — just the landing page."
Scope check
"I'm building [describe your app]. Help me figure out what to include in my MVP and what to save for later. I want to launch this week. What's the minimum set of features that would make this useful?"
