Over the past decade, I’ve worked with countless early-stage teams across large corporations, startups, and my own products. I’ve discovered a fundamental truth about ideas that never materialize: Ideas that don’t launch quickly are destined to fail. Let me break this down.
When teams first conceptualize an idea, there’s always incredible enthusiasm. Everyone’s buzzing with potential solutions to market problems and hypothetical user needs. We start with design and conceptualization, brainstorming what we believe are essential features. But this is precisely where things typically start unraveling. Teams get lost in the minutiae of product aesthetics and functionality instead of focusing on the core problem that needs solving.
A common pitfall is spending excessive time reinventing standard components. Teams obsess over creating unique onboarding experiences, developing novel approaches to basic functions like sign-up flows, login systems, and password reset mechanisms.
This is where teams waste valuable time and lose sight of what truly matters. I’ve fallen into this trap myself multiple times.
While we claim to be working on an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), we often try to cram in too many features, bloating the scope beyond reasonable MVP timelines. There’s this persistent myth in product design that if customers have a less-than-perfect initial experience, they’ll abandon the product forever.
This simply isn’t true for products that solve real problems. Your MVP can be basic or even rough around the edges – its primary purpose is to validate your concept and understand actual user behavior and needs. This insight goes far beyond what you’ll learn from traditional usability testing with a handful of users.
In today’s fast-paced market, traditional user validation methods aren’t sufficient to determine which features deserve your development resources. Building and launching a real MVP helps you validate your idea with actual paying users, providing genuine insights into product usage patterns and feature requirements.
While building MVPs used to be expensive and time-consuming (largely because teams were building full products instead of true MVPs), today’s landscape is different. We can validate ideas quickly using landing pages, low-code/no-code tools, and AI to create MVPs that launch in weeks or even days, rather than the traditional 3-6 month timeline.
Modern product teams can accelerate development by leveraging existing UI kits, plugins, and proven user flow patterns instead of designing everything from scratch. There’s no need to reinvent standard interactions like sign-up flows or login systems at the MVP stage. Most products don’t require custom design systems because users are already familiar with established UI patterns.
Teams that fail to launch quickly usually fall victim to scope creep. They continually add design elements and features they think users might want, paralyzed by the fear of losing early customers. This pattern kills many promising product ideas before they ever reach the market. If you find yourself in this cycle, stop and start eliminating any features that don’t directly address your core problem.
Your MVP should be stripped down to absolute essentials – only the core features needed to accomplish the user’s primary task and generate feedback. Nothing more. Avoid the temptation to add “nice-to-have” features early on. If I could give advice to my younger self in product design and management, it would be this: focus exclusively on core functionality and implement robust analytics and feedback systems to understand how users actually interact with your product.
Are you working on a project that’s stuck in this endless ideation loop, burning through resources with no launch in sight? I can help your team narrow down to core features and launch your MVP in weeks instead of months. Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website to learn more. For additional insights on rapid product launches, check further reading below.
UX Metrics That Really Matter to Drive Product Success Through Meaningful Measurement: https://www.dobetterux.com/ux-metrics-that-really-matter/
Accelerating Product Launches in the South African Startup Ecosystem: https://www.dobetterux.com/accelerating-product-launches-in-the-south-african-startup-ecosystem/
Validate Ideas and Launch Products Fast with No-Code Tools in 2024 – 2025: https://www.dobetterux.com/no-code-tools-rapid-mvp-product-launch-2024/
Validation Hacks: Testing Your Idea Before Writing a Single Line of Code: https://www.dobetterux.com/validation-hacks-testing-your-idea-before-writing-a-single-line-of-code/
