Chapter 2 · Practice 2 of 4
Build the one core job end to end, and fake the rest
Why it matters
The MVP should do one job for your narrow first customer, completely. Everything else can be manual, missing or faked.
| Usually in the MVP | Usually not yet |
|---|---|
| The core workflow, start to finish | Team accounts and roles |
| Sign up and log in | Fine-grained settings |
| A way to pay, or a manual invoice | Integrations beyond the one users demand |
| Basic error handling and backups | Native apps on every platform |
| A way for users to contact you | Analytics dashboards for customers |
Manual work behind the scenes is fine at this stage: importing a customer's data yourself, sending reports by hand, setting up accounts personally. Paul Graham's essay argues that nearly every startup has to do unscalable work at the start, and it doubles as a way to learn exactly what to automate.
Do
- Do manual work behind the scenes where it saves building time
Avoid
- Building admin panels and settings before anyone pays