You’ve already got a brilliant idea for new software. You’ve probably discussed it with lots of potential customers, gathered some initial positive feedback, and perhaps even carried out some preliminary market research. You feel that this is ‘the one’. The natural next step in this puzzle is to build an MVP – a Minimum Viable Product.
For bootstrappers, those launching a new SaaS business, and also for companies developing their own internal tools, an MVP is the absolute Holy Grail. It’s your ticket to validating your idea without burning through hundreds of thousands of zlotys from your own savings. However, at the same time, a misunderstood MVP is the quickest route to financial and strategic failure.
Let’s see how to approach this topic with a level head, technological savvy and business pragmatism. What do you need to know to even begin discussing an MVP with your chosen software house?
What exactly is an MVP (and what is it definitely NOT)?
Let’s start with the basics. And no, I’m not just talking about explaining the acronym itself. Every entrepreneur in today’s market knows what those three letters stand for. What I mean is a deep understanding and acceptance of the philosophy behind the MVP. We know from experience that this is where founders make the most costly mistakes.
An MVP is not your final product with a few features cut out. It is not a ‘cheap version’ of your grand vision. An MVP is intended solely as proof that your idea solves a real problem and that the market is willing to pay for that solution. That is why it should be limited to the absolute, bare minimum – to those elements that allow you to prove this fact. If the main value of your product is saving time when issuing invoices, the MVP does not need a module for generating advanced 3D charts.
Treat the MVP as you would a scientific experiment. You put forward a business hypothesis, and the application is your laboratory, where you test that hypothesis on a living organism – the users.
How important is the choice of technology in an MVP?
Although intuition suggests that continuing to develop the product using the same target technology will be the most cost-effective solution in the long run, the MVP stage can help to verify this approach. At the same time, I would venture to say that currently any popular technology will be entirely sufficient to take a start-up at least to the seed stage, and any issues with scalability or performance will stem solely from incorrect implementation. In reality, problems may arise where the use of very specific or industry – specific implementations or libraries is required – and these elements may be the most sensitive to the choice of tools – yet at the same time, this constitutes only part of the system.
The Minimum Viable Product stage can very quickly expose the limitations of the chosen solution (especially if you’ve been tempted by trendy but inflexible no-code platforms). In such a case, you shouldn’t force development to continue until you hit a painful technological wall. Instead, treat the data you’ve gathered as a foundation and rebuild the system – as soon as possible, on solid and scalable technology.
Building an MVP and subsequently rewriting it (once you have revenue and confidence in the model) is often a better business strategy than building a system ready for millions of users from day one (so-called over-engineering), which ultimately fails to find a single buyer.
Proven Technology Stacks
Rather than reinventing the wheel, at Sailing Byte we recommend relying on technologies that strike the perfect balance between time-to-market and future scalability:
- Backend (Logic and Databases): The PHP ecosystem, and in particular the Laravel framework, is currently one of the most powerful engines for building SaaS solutions. It allows for the rapid deployment of architecture, payment integrations (e.g. Stripe) or user authentication in a fraction of the time it would take in other environments. On top of that, a whole host of ready-made libraries and entire frameworks (such as Filament) allow you to create a quick draft of a complete service.
- Frontend (User Interface): Modern web applications require fluidity and dynamism. Here, ReactJS remains the undisputed leader. The combination of a robust Laravel backend with a responsive React frontend is the industry gold standard for bootstrapped projects.
- Mobile Apps: If your MVP is intended to be a mobile app, developing native versions for iOS and Android separately will blow your budget. The answer is Flutter – a technology created by Google that allows you to write a single, consistent codebase which compiles to both mobile platforms, looking and behaving like a native product.
- Infrastructure: Bootstrappers are often daunted by the huge costs of cloud infrastructure (AWS, Google Cloud). The truth is that at the MVP stage, you rarely need them. Properly configured servers based on Proxmox virtualisation, using the extremely stable Debian system, provide an environment that will successfully ‘handle’ your first customers at a fraction of the cost of the big clouds, whilst ensuring full control and data security.
- Architecture: From the very start, we recommend a headless architecture. Although the costs may be slightly higher than with simple monoliths, this architecture gains an advantage when you expose client APIs or when you’re also developing a mobile app as part of your MVP. It then becomes possible to use the same unified logic, thereby ensuring greater consistency across the entire ecosystem.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) – Don’t Guess, Verify!
I know you have dozens, if not hundreds, of different ideas for features in your head and in your notebooks. You’d like to offer your customers everything your competitors do, and add your own innovations on top of that. But understand one thing: don’t set out to do all of that at the MVP stage.
Software should be developed based on evidence of user behaviour – this is the core tenet of the Evidence-Based Management (EBM) philosophy. Your plan for features is largely just assumptions (guesswork). Only when a user logs into the system and starts clicking around will you discover the truth.
- Build the ‘Core’: Focus on the core at the start. If you’re building a yacht booking app, the MVP must allow users to select a yacht, choose a date, pay, and receive confirmation. That’s it.
- Measure and analyse: Set up analytics, see where users spend their time and where they abandon the process. Tools such as Google Tag, Sentry, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar and similar are very helpful here.
- Develop iteratively: Only come up with and implement new features once behavioural analysis and genuine feedback from customers justify their development. It may turn out that the feature you were planning to invest a lot of your own money in isn’t actually needed by anyone.
Flaws in the MVP? It depends which ones.
There is a common misconception that an MVP must be absolutely bug-free. The truth is far more nuanced. An MVP may well have bugs, and usually will. However, it is important to understand what type of bug we are talking about.
Of course, these cannot be ‘bugs’ that block basic user actions. A programming error in the code that triggers a ‘server error’ (e.g. status 500) when attempting to register and prevents the creation of an account is unacceptable – because it will not allow you to achieve your goal – that is, to conduct a business experiment.
However, an “error” at this stage could be something entirely different – a conceptual or strategic error. An example? Choosing an unsuitable payment processor that turns out to be too complicated for your target group (e.g. senior citizens). It could be a poor email notification policy that annoys customers, or overly aggressive interface colours (UX/UI) that distract attention from the “Buy” button.
From a Lean perspective, this is perfectly fine. That is precisely what an MVP is for: to catch these kinds of strategic missteps early on. An app is always put to the test when it collides with the brutal reality of the market. It is easier and cheaper to change the payment gateway or colour scheme in a simple MVP than in a “monster” codebase developed over two years.
Theoretically, the biggest “mistake” you can make when creating an MVP is, of course, a lack of business value. A lack of this value will mean you won’t have any users willing to pay for your SaaS. Of course, before you start building an MVP, there are a few things you can do to check whether this is actually a problem, but my point here is to show that limiting the scope of your MVP reduces your business risk to the absolute minimum – and you know you won’t lose anything more. The total cost of launching the MVP is the maximum loss you can incur. And at the same time, if you have any users, the MVP can generate revenue from day one.
Do you know who you’re up against? Market research as a foundation
It goes without saying – the idea is what matters most. But let’s talk about things that are less glamorous but critical to survival – the competition.
A frequently asked question is: Do I need a full market analysis to get a quote for an MVP from a software house? The answer is: No. For a software quote, we need an outline of the processes. But it’s worth doing some market research. Even if only to a minimal extent – before starting any discussions, for your own market security. At Sailing Byte, however, we would never leave you to face such a situation alone, as we routinely invite clients to participate in workshops. These are designed not only to identify such issues but also to demonstrate how a software house operates and how we can derive the greatest benefits from our mutual collaboration.
As a bootstrapper, you need to optimise your time. The simplest yet highly effective thing you can do to start with is to use generative AI. Here is a ready-made, tried-and-tested prompt that you can enter into your chat (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.):
“I have an idea for a [NAME/INDUSTRY] project. It involves… [detailed description of the project, its main objectives, target audience]. Conduct a concise analysis of the competition in the [Polish / Global] market. Examine their pricing models, define their target audience precisely, identify similar features they offer, and analyse their strengths and weaknesses (in terms of product and service).”
Of course, you can’t rely 100% on the raw results of such a query alone. AI hallucinations are a reality, including the invention of ‘facts’ and non-existent source data. But that’s not the point here. The aim is simply to provide a quick starting point from which you can build further.
You should then manually verify the results of this virtual research. Set up free accounts on the apps of the competitors identified (click through their systems), look at how they’ve solved specific problems and, above all, get to know the general landscape of the market you’re about to enter. And while in-depth market research isn’t actually necessary for the technical valuation and coding of an MVP, it is an absolutely critical tool for verifying the viability of your business.
Unique Selling Point: What are you actually trying to sell?
The absolute cornerstone of effective software sales – especially in the SaaS model – is clearly setting yourself apart. Unless you’re a huge corporation that can afford to ‘burn through’ cash. Also, unless you want to (and shouldn’t!) compete solely on price, you need to fully understand the value your idea offers.
And by “understand”, I don’t just mean that you intuitively “know” what the advantage of your application is. You must be able to describe that value perfectly, defend it in a discussion and prove it (data from an MVP pilot programme is also ideal for proving this, where you can collect, for example, the average time a customer takes to go through the process!). Only by communicating in the language of benefits will you be able to effectively reach your target customers (the so-called Early Adopters).
You’re not selling a “sophisticated CRM written in ReactJS with a database”. From the customer’s point of view, the underlying technology is secondary. What you’re actually selling is “regaining 10 hours a week previously wasted searching for emails from customers” or “increasing sales conversion by 15% thanks to automatic reminders”. The customer isn’t interested in the means to an end – only the tangible benefit they’re buying.
If you can’t describe the value your MVP will deliver in a single, concrete sentence (an Elevator Pitch), it means you should go back to the drawing board before paying the first invoice for coding (or, of course, consult us at our workshops!)
Delve deeper and organise your thoughts
Remember to structure your ideas within a clear framework. There are no better tools for this than the Lean Canvas or the Business Model Canvas. It’s a simple, one-page business plan template that fits perfectly with the Minimum Viable Product philosophy. It forces you to identify your target audience, revenue streams, distribution channels and – most importantly – your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). It can also be a great basis for creating a pitch deck!
If you haven’t filled it in yet, be sure to read our guide: Lean Canvas or Business Model Canvas – Simplify Your Business Plan in a Few Steps
I’m ready to build an MVP – what next?
You’ve done your market research, defined your value proposition, filled in the Lean Canvas, and come to terms with the fact that your first version of the app will have a minimal feature set (Core). Great, that’s a huge step forward! It cuts the time spent on business discussions in half and drastically increases your chances of success.
But hold on a moment before you ask for a binding “quote down to the last penny”. Building good software is an engineering project, and nobody builds a bridge without a detailed architectural design.
Consider investing in professional, paid design workshops (so-called Discovery Workshops). This is our strong recommendation for every founder, especially if you’re doing “something like this” for the first time. Why is this so important?
The workshops are not just a casual “chat about an idea”. They are a structured, multi-day process involving business analysts, UX designers and Tech Leads. During the workshops:
- We break your idea down into its constituent parts and map out the so-called User Journeys.
- We pit your business assumptions against technological realities (we determine whether we’ll use PHP/Laravel or perhaps a pure microservice; whether we’ll integrate existing APIs or write our own).
- Together, assertively and ruthlessly, we cut out features that aren’t essential for validating the idea, saving your budget from the phenomenon known as ‘scope creep’.
- We verify which elements are already ready from a business perspective, and which require further clarification or perhaps additional research.
You finish the workshops with concrete wireframes, a detailed list of functional requirements (backlog) and – most importantly – a reliable, quantifiable time and cost estimate. The cost of such workshops is a fraction of the entire project budget, and almost always saves between a few thousand and several tens of thousands of zlotys during the actual coding phase. You gain the certainty that the software house fully understands your vision, and we gain the certainty of how to build it safely and reliably in production. It also means virtually zero risk for you – all materials developed during the workshops are your property, and you hold full copyright to them, with the assurance that all information obtained will remain private!
So, how do you get started with this whole MVP thing?
Building a Minimum Viable Product is a fascinating yet demanding journey. For bootstrappers, it’s a test of patience, discipline and cold calculation. Focus on the core – the business value. Choose stable, easily scalable technologies (such as Laravel with React or mobile solutions based on Flutter). Be prepared to invest in paid workshops, as they will provide you with the best value at low risk. Get to grips with testing and be ready to evolve once you’ve gathered user data. A well-prepared and thoroughly tested MVP isn’t a cost – it’s your first, best business investment. Ready to get started? Contact us today.
