The $100,000 Ghost Town

I once worked with a founder—let’s call him Mark—who had a 'brilliant' idea for a niche social network. Mark spent eighteen months and nearly six figures building it. He had a custom-built messaging engine, a complex notification system with seven different toggle levels, and a profile customization suite that would make MySpace look primitive. He even spent three weeks arguing with his developers about the exact shade of 'midnight blue' for the dark mode toggle.

When he finally launched on Product Hunt, the feedback wasn't bad. It was non-existent. People didn't care about the midnight blue. They didn't care about the custom emojis. They didn't even sign up because the core problem he was trying to solve—connecting local hobbyists—was buried under a mountain of unnecessary features. Mark hadn't built a Minimum Viable Product; he’d built a monument to his own assumptions. And it was a very expensive monument.

Look, I get it. You're passionate. You want your product to be perfect. You're worried that if you don't have 'Feature X,' users will think your app is 'cheap' or 'unprofessional.' But here's the cold, hard truth: Nobody cares about your features if your product doesn't solve their burning problem. Every hour you spend polishing a 'nice-to-have' is an hour you aren't spending talking to users or refining your core value proposition. If you want to survive the early days of a startup, you have to learn the art of the ruthless cut. You need to stop building and start shipping.

The Fear of Being Bare-Bones

Why do we overbuild? It’s usually a defense mechanism. We’re scared that our core idea isn't strong enough on its own, so we wrap it in layers of fluff. We think, 'If I just add this one more integration, then they'll see the value.' In reality, you're just making it harder for the user to find the one thing they actually need from you. As Eric Ries famously noted in his work on The Lean Startup, the goal of an MVP is to maximize learning with the least amount of effort. If you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you probably launched too late.

1. The Infrastructure and 'Scale' Trap

One of the biggest time-wasters for early-stage founders is worrying about scalability before they have a single user. I’ve seen teams spend months setting up complex Kubernetes clusters and microservices architectures for an app that currently handles zero requests per second. It’s technical vanity, plain and simple.

Microservices vs. The Monolith

Stop trying to be Netflix on day one. Netflix needs microservices because they have thousands of engineers and millions of concurrent viewers. You have two developers and a laptop. A simple monolith is faster to build, easier to deploy, and significantly cheaper to maintain. If you’re lucky enough to have so much traffic that your monolith breaks, that’s a 'high-class problem.' You can fix it then. For now, focus on speed to market.

The Database Obsession

You don't need a distributed, multi-region NoSQL setup yet. A standard PostgreSQL database on a single server can handle way more than you think. Don't waste weeks researching the latest graph databases or specialized time-series storage unless your core product literally cannot function without it. Use what you know, or use what is most common. According to data from Statista, the vast majority of successful web applications still rely on tried-and-true relational databases for their foundation.

• Cut this: Multi-region failover setups.
• Cut this: Complex microservices communication layers.
• Keep this: A reliable, single-region cloud host like AWS or DigitalOcean.

2. The Identity and Profile Rabbit Hole

Founders love building user profiles. It feels like you're building a community, doesn't it? You want users to upload avatars, write bios, link their social media, and choose their favorite colors. But unless your product is a social network, these features are almost certainly dead weight.

Social Logins: Pick One or None

You don't need 'Login with Google,' 'Login with Apple,' 'Login with Facebook,' and 'Login with X.' Every one of those integrations adds complexity to your authentication flow and more points of failure. Pick the one your target audience uses most, or just stick to basic email and password. Even better? Use a service like Auth0 or Clerk to handle the heavy lifting so you don't have to build the logic yourself.

Profile Customization is a Distraction

Does a user really need to be able to change their background header image on a SaaS productivity tool? Probably not. If the user's bio doesn't directly impact the core utility of the app, cut it. Your first users are there to solve a problem, not to decorate their digital apartment. Focus on the functional requirements first.

"The most important thing to do when you're starting is to focus. You have to be okay with saying no to a lot of good ideas to make sure the great ones get through." - Steve Jobs

3. Over-Engineering the Onboarding

We've all heard that first impressions matter. This leads founders to create elaborate, multi-step onboarding tours with pulsing tooltips and progress bars. While a smooth experience is great, building a custom onboarding engine for an MVP is a massive waste of resources.

The 'Empty State' Problem

Instead of a 10-step tour, focus on empty states. If a user logs in and sees a blank screen, that's a failure. But you don't need a complex tutorial to fix it. A simple 'Click here to get started' button or a few sample data points is often enough. You can always use a 'low-code' tool like Intercom or Appcues to layer on guidance later without touching your codebase.

Mandatory Email Verification

I know, I know—you want to prevent spam. But at the MVP stage, friction is your enemy. Do you really need to force a user to leave your app, find an email, click a link, and log back in before they can see the value? Unless you're dealing with highly sensitive data, consider letting them in first and asking for verification later. Your goal is to get them to the 'Aha!' moment as fast as possible.

1. Identify the 'Aha!' moment: What is the one action that proves your app's value?
2. Remove every click: Strip away every field, button, and screen that stands between the user and that action.
3. Observe: Use a tool like Hotjar to see where people actually get stuck.

4. Building a Custom Billing Engine

This is a hill I will die on: Never build your own billing system. I don't care how simple your pricing is. Billing involves subscription logic, prorating, tax compliance (VAT, anyone?), invoice generation, and handling failed payments. It is a bottomless pit of edge cases.

Leverage Existing Platforms

Use Stripe Checkout or Paddle. They allow you to host the entire payment experience on their servers. You don't need to build a 'Plans and Pricing' page in your app. You don't need to build a 'Credit Card Update' form. Just redirect them to a pre-built Stripe page. It’s secure, it handles PCI compliance, and it takes about two hours to set up instead of two weeks.

The 'Free' vs. 'Paid' Dilemma

If you aren't sure if people will pay, don't even build the billing integration yet. Put up a 'Pricing' page with a 'Buy' button that leads to a 'We're coming soon, join the waitlist' form. This is a classic smoke test. If nobody clicks the button, why bother building the billing system at all? As discussed on TechCrunch, many successful startups validated demand through simple landing pages before a single line of functional code was written.

5. The Design Perfectionism Trap

You want your MVP to look like it was designed by a world-class agency. You spend hours tweaking border-radii and shadow blurs. Stop. Unless you are building a design tool, 'good enough' is actually good enough. A clean, functional UI using a standard framework is better than a custom, beautiful UI that took three months to build.

Use a Component Library

Don't write custom CSS for your buttons and modals. Use Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, or Material UI. These libraries have already solved the accessibility and responsiveness issues you haven't even thought of yet. They allow you to assemble a professional-looking interface in a fraction of the time.

Brand Identity vs. Functional UI

Your brand identity—the logo, the custom fonts, the unique illustrations—can wait. Use a system font (like Inter or San Francisco). Use a simple logotype. The user experience (UX) is about how it works, not how it looks. If the workflow is clunky, a pretty gradient won't save you. Focus on the information architecture and making sure the user knows what to do next.

6. Advanced Analytics and 'Big Data'

You want to know everything about your users. You want to track every click, every hover, and every scroll. You want a custom dashboard that shows you your Churn Rate, LTV, and CAC in real-time. But here's the thing: with 10 users, these metrics are statistically irrelevant.

The MVP Metrics That Matter

You don't need a complex data warehouse. You need a simple tool like Mixpanel or just plain old Google Analytics. Focus on retention: are people coming back? Everything else is noise at this stage. You don't need to build an internal admin dashboard either. If you need to see user data, look at the database directly or use a low-code tool like Retool to build a quick view.

Avoid 'Vanity Metrics'

Don't spend time building features to track total signups or page views. These are vanity metrics that don't tell you if your product is actually working. Focus on engagement metrics. If you have 100 signups but 0 people used the app a second time, your problem isn't marketing—it's the product. Spend your time fixing that, not building a prettier chart to show your failure.

• Cut this: Custom internal analytics dashboards.
• Cut this: Deep integration with five different marketing pixels.
• Keep this: One simple tool to track core user actions.

7. The 'Manual' MVP: Doing Things That Don't Scale

We often think an MVP has to be a fully automated piece of software. It doesn't. Some of the most successful startups started as 'Mechanical Turk' versions of themselves. This means the front-end looks like an app, but the back-end is just a human (you) doing work manually.

The Concierge Approach

If you're building an AI-powered resume builder, don't start by building the AI. Build a form where people upload their info, and then *you* manually rewrite the resume and email it back to them. This allows you to learn exactly what users want without spending months on machine learning models. Harvard Business Review often cites this 'concierge' model as the most efficient way to validate high-touch service ideas.

Zappos and the Power of Manual

The founder of Zappos didn't start by building a massive warehouse and inventory system. He went to a local shoe store, took photos of shoes, put them on a website, and when someone bought a pair, he went back to the store, bought them at retail price, and mailed them. He validated that people were willing to buy shoes online before he built a single piece of automation. That is the definition of a smart MVP.

8. Mobile Apps: Do You Really Need One?

I see so many founders insist on launching with an iOS and Android app. They hire React Native or Flutter developers and spend months dealing with App Store rejections. Unless your product relies on push notifications, the camera, or offline access, you probably don't need a native app yet.

The PWA Alternative

A well-optimized web app (or a Progressive Web App) can do 90% of what a native app can do for 10% of the cost. It’s easier to update, it’s searchable on Google, and there’s no friction of downloading something from a store. Start with the web. If people are screaming for a mobile app, then you have validated demand. Until then, stay in the browser.

Cross-Platform Constraints

Building for two platforms doubles your maintenance surface area. Every bug has to be fixed twice. Every feature has to be designed for two different interaction patterns. For an MVP, this is a recipe for stagnation. Pick the platform where your users are most active and dominate that first. Look at the history of Instagram; they were iOS-only for a long time before they ever touched Android. They focused on being great on one platform first.

How to Decide What Stays

So, how do you actually decide what to cut? I use a simple framework called the 'Pain-Point Filter'. For every feature you have planned, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Does this feature directly solve the core problem? If the answer is 'it helps' or 'it’s a nice addition,' cut it.
2. Can the user achieve the goal without this? If they can do it manually, or via a slightly more annoying path, cut it.
3. Will a user leave and never come back if this is missing? Be honest here. Most 'missing' features are just minor inconveniences, not deal-breakers.

If a feature doesn't pass all three, it doesn't make it into version 1.0. You aren't deleting these ideas forever; you're putting them in a product backlog to be addressed once you have actual user data to back them up.

The 'One-Thing' Rule

Your MVP should do one thing exceptionally well. If you're building a tool for freelance writers to track invoices, focus *only* on the tracking. Don't add a calendar. Don't add a client CRM. Don't add a tax calculator. Just make the tracking dead simple. Once you've nailed that, and people are using it every day, they will tell you what they want next. Usually, it’s not what you think.

Wrapping Up: Launch is the Beginning, Not the End

Here's the thing you have to remember: your MVP isn't your final product. It's a learning tool. The moment you launch, your assumptions will start crashing into reality. You'll find out that users don't use the features you loved, and they're desperately asking for things you never considered. By cutting the fluff now, you're giving yourself the financial runway and the mental energy to pivot and adapt when that feedback starts rolling in.

So, go through your feature list right now. Be ruthless. Be mean to your ideas. If you can't justify a feature as absolutely essential to the user's survival, slash it. Your bank account, your developers, and your future users will thank you. Now, stop reading this and go ship something.

What's your 'Must-Have' feature?

I'd love to hear from you. What's the one feature you're terrified to cut from your MVP? Drop a comment or reach out on social. Sometimes, all you need is a second pair of eyes to tell you that, no, you definitely don't need that AI-powered chatbot yet.