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Here is a preview of our upcoming book. We will deliver chapter previews and more every Monday. Stay tuned.

DAY 10

Your First Rung

Your mockup from yesterday showed you what your product could look like. Today, you get to decide what it will actually do.

No matter what you’re trying to achieve with a business, always remember that people buy a product for the relief it promises. That’s where most MVPs go wrong. Founders get excited, build something quick, and call it a minimum viable product. But that minimal doesn’t mean half-baked. It doesn’t mean a preview. It means enough to solve one problem fully.

You must be able to decide what must be built and what can wait. The first version of your product is a bet—not on the market but on your own ability to understand someone else’s pain. To achieve this, you have to stop asking, “What’s the minimum we can build?” and start asking, “What’s the minimum that actually solves the problem?”

That’s the first rung. It has to hold weight, or no one climbs.

Most advice tells you to start small and iterate. But starting small often means starting useless. A calendar app that only shows today’s events isn’t a simplified calendar—it’s a clock. A social network that only lets you add friends isn't a basic social network—it's a contact list.

Think about Splitwise. Their MVP wasn’t just expense tracking. It was automated debt simplification. If they’d stopped at “log who paid what,” they’d be a glorified spreadsheet. The insight was that group tension isn’t about numbers but unresolved balances.

This distinction matters because it changes how you define scope. Instead of asking, "What features can we cut?" you ask, "What problem can we solve completely?" The first question leads to compromised solutions. The second leads to focused solutions.

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