- An MVP is the smallest thing that tests whether the core assumption behind your product is correct. Not the smallest version that still looks good. The smallest version that proves something. - Most founders build 3x too much. The wrapper around the product (login screens, settings, notifications) always gets built before the product itself. - There are six types of MVPs. Pick the right one for what you're trying to validate, not the one that requires the most code. - AI tools in 2026 (Cursor, v0, Copilot) have cut MVP development time by 30 to 50 percent for experienced developers who use them well. - Define your success metric before you build. Not after. - AdeptDev connects your MVP task board to GitHub and Vercel so you can see what's built, what's deployed, and whether it's working in one place.

## What an MVP Actually Is Minimum Viable Product. The word minimum does most of the work. Most founders ignore it. An MVP is not a beta. It's not v1.0 with features removed. It's not a polished product you're a little embarrassed about. It's the smallest thing you can build that tests whether the core assumption behind your product is correct. Every SaaS product rests on an assumption: a specific type of person has a specific problem and will pay a specific amount to have it solved. The MVP is a test of that assumption. Nothing more. What this means practically: your MVP might not have a settings page. It might not have email notifications. It might not have a polished onboarding flow. It has the one feature that either proves or disproves the assumption, and nothing else. The reason most MVPs take too long is simple. Founders build the wrapper around the core feature before they build the core feature. Login screens. Profile management. Admin dashboards. These feel like product work. They're infrastructure. They wait.

## AdeptDev: MVP Project Management Built for Founders Once you start building, you need a system to track what's being built, what's deployed, and whether it's working. Without one, you'll spend 30 minutes every morning piecing together the state of the project from four different tabs. AdeptDev connects your Kanban board to GitHub via webhooks and surfaces Vercel deployment status alongside your tasks. Tasks move automatically when you push code or open a PR. Build status appears next to the task that triggered it. Analytics from PostHog or Google Analytics sit in the same workspace. For MVP development specifically, this removes the context-switching overhead that kills momentum when you're trying to move fast. One tab. Everything you need to know about the state of the project. Two Kanban boards per workspace: a Roadmap for features and a Bug Tracker for issues. GitHub webhooks move tasks automatically. Vercel deployment tracking built in. Analytics connected. $10/month flat after a 7-day free trial. Try it at [adeptdev.io](https://adeptdev.io).

## The Six Types of MVPs Not every MVP requires writing code. This is one of the most underappreciated points in MVP development and the one that saves the most time. Picking the right MVP type depends on what you're trying to validate. If you're validating whether the problem is real, you don't need a working product. If you're validating whether your solution works, you might. Here are the six approaches and when to use each. **1. Landing Page MVP** Build a page that describes the product, shows what it does, and includes a signup form or waitlist. Drive traffic to it. Measure the conversion rate. Best for: validating whether enough people have the problem to make a market. If 2 out of 100 visitors sign up, the interest is thin. If 30 out of 100 sign up, you have signal. **2. Concierge MVP** Do the thing your product will eventually do, manually, for a small number of users. If you're building a SaaS that automates reporting, send the reports manually. If you're building a tool that analyzes code, do the analysis yourself and send it via email. Best for: validating whether users actually get value from the outcome, before you automate it. The most honest test of whether the thing you're building is useful. **3. Wizard of Oz MVP** Users think they're using an automated product. Behind the scenes, it's you doing everything manually. The interface exists but the automation doesn't. Best for: testing whether users will engage with the workflow before you invest in building the backend. Especially useful when the automation is expensive or complex to build. **4. Fake Door MVP** Add a button or feature to an existing product that doesn't do anything yet. When a user clicks it, they see a "coming soon" message. You track how many people click. Best for: validating demand for a specific feature before building it. If nobody clicks the button in three weeks, you learned something valuable without writing a line of code. **5. Single-Feature MVP** Build one feature, well. The feature that directly delivers the core value of the product. Nothing else. This is the right type for most SaaS MVPs built by developers. One workflow, working reliably, that lets a user accomplish the thing your product is supposed to do. **6. Piecemeal MVP** Combine existing tools to deliver the product's value proposition before building anything custom. Use Zapier to connect two APIs. Use Notion as a database. Use Calendly as a scheduling layer. Best for: validating the business model before validating the technology. If users won't pay for the cobbled-together version, they probably won't pay for the polished custom one either. The question to ask before choosing: what is the minimum amount of work that tells me whether this assumption is correct? Pick the type that answers that question.

## Using AI Tools to Build Your MVP Faster MVP development in 2026 looks meaningfully different from 2023. AI coding tools have compressed timelines for developers who use them well. 30 to 50 percent faster for straightforward features is realistic. For UI work specifically, the gains are larger. Here's what actually works: **Cursor for the core codebase.** Cursor understands your full codebase, not just the current file. Ask it to implement a feature and it looks at your existing patterns, your database schema, your component structure. The output requires review but it's rarely starting from scratch. For a developer building an MVP solo, Cursor is the closest thing to a pair programmer who never gets tired. **v0 for UI.** Vercel's v0 generates React components from a text description. Describe a pricing table, a dashboard layout, a settings page, and it returns working shadcn/ui code. The components need refinement but they save two to four hours of layout work per screen. For an MVP where the UI needs to be functional but not beautiful, this matters. **GitHub Copilot for boilerplate.** Auth flows, CRUD operations, form validation, API route handlers. Copilot completes the patterns you've established in your codebase. It's not thinking. It's pattern-matching. But a lot of MVP code is pattern-matching, and getting it done in minutes instead of hours adds up. **What AI tools don't replace.** Architecture decisions. Database schema design. Choosing what to build and what to cut. Talking to users. Reading the metrics and deciding what they mean. These are the decisions that determine whether the MVP succeeds. AI makes the implementation faster. It doesn't do the thinking. One practical note: AI-generated code requires review, especially around auth, billing, and data access. A bug in Copilot-generated webhook handling will cost you more time to debug than it saved to write. Review carefully for anything touching security or money.

## The MVP Development Process Five stages. In order. Don't skip stage one. This is the MVP process that works for most founders building SaaS, and MVP development for startups specifically benefits from the discipline of going in this exact order. **Stage 1: Define the core assumption** Write down the one assumption your product depends on. One sentence. "Solo developers spend 30 minutes a day switching between their task board, Vercel, and analytics, and would pay $10/month for a tool that combines them." Specific user. Specific problem. Specific behavior. Specific price. If you can't write it in one sentence, you don't know what you're building yet. That's a sign to keep talking to people before starting development. **Stage 2: Choose the MVP type and scope** Given the assumption, which type of MVP tests it fastest? Which features are required to run the test? Write down every feature you think the product needs. Cross out everything that doesn't directly test the core assumption. What's left is your MVP features list and your scope. One filter that helps: if removing this feature means you can no longer test whether the core assumption is true, it stays. If removing it just means the product is less polished, it goes. **Stage 3: Build** Build the minimum feature set. Nothing else. This is harder than it sounds. While building, you'll constantly notice things that feel incomplete or obviously necessary. Most of it is scope creep. The test: does adding this help you learn whether the core assumption is true? If not, it goes in the Backlog and waits. Use AI tools here. Cursor, v0, Copilot. The goal is speed, not craft. You can refactor after validation. **Stage 4: Measure** Get the MVP in front of real users and measure the right thing. Not whether they say they like it. Whether they use it and come back. Qualitative feedback (what they say) explains why something is or isn't working. Quantitative data (what they actually do) tests whether the assumption is correct. You need both. **Stage 5: Decide** Based on what you measured, make one of three decisions: - **Persevere.** The assumption was correct. Users activate, return, and get value. Build more. - **Pivot.** The assumption was wrong but you learned something. Change one element and test again. - **Stop.** The assumption was wrong and there's no clear path to a better one. This is valuable. Better to learn it after an MVP than after a full product. Most founders treat this as binary (keep building or shut down) when it's often a partial pivot: different user, different problem, different price point.

## How to Scope Your MVP Features The hardest part of MVP development is deciding what to leave out. Here's the framework that works. **Start with the job to be done.** What is the user trying to accomplish? Not what features do you want to build, but what outcome does the user need? Every feature in your MVP directly serves that outcome. Everything else waits. **The embarrassed but functional test.** Your MVP should make you slightly embarrassed by what it can't do, but it should do what it can do reliably. Not embarrassed means you probably built too much. Not reliable means you built the wrong things. **Three-criteria ranking:** 1. Does this directly test the core assumption? 2. Would users leave without it? 3. How long does it take to build? Features that score high on criteria 1 and 2 but low on criteria 3 go in first. Features that score low on criteria 1 go out entirely. **Cut the settings page.** Hardcode sensible defaults. Let users email you if they need something different. Add settings when you know what users actually need. **Cut the admin dashboard.** Query the database directly. Send emails manually. Do things that don't scale until you have proof they need to scale. **Cut the notification system.** Hardcode one critical notification (password reset). Skip the rest until you know what notifications users actually want. What remains after cutting all of this is almost always the core workflow. One flow, working reliably. That's the MVP.

## Success Metrics: What to Measure Before You Launch This is the section most MVP guides skip. Most founders launch and then figure out what to measure. That's backwards. Define your success metric before you build. One metric. If you can't hit it with your MVP, the core assumption is probably wrong. Here are the metrics that actually matter at the MVP stage: **Activation rate.** The percentage of signups who complete the core workflow at least once. This is the first signal of whether the product delivers the value you promised. Industry benchmark: above 40% activation is strong for a B2B SaaS MVP. **Day-7 retention.** Of users who activated, how many came back within a week? This tests whether the product is solving a recurring problem or a one-time curiosity. Benchmark: above 25% day-7 retention suggests a real habit is forming. **Completion rate of the core workflow.** Not just signups. Not just visits. The percentage of users who do the specific thing your product is designed around. If 80% of users sign up and 15% complete the core workflow, the drop-off is your problem, not the acquisition. **Time to first value.** How long does it take a new user to get from signup to the moment they understand why the product is useful? For most SaaS MVPs, under 10 minutes is the goal. Over 30 minutes is a problem. Set your targets before launch. Not aspirationally (40% activation would be nice) but as a binary test (if we hit 30% activation after 50 users, we persevere; if we don't, we investigate why before adding features).

## MVP Development Timeline: What to Actually Expect Honest numbers for a solo developer building a SaaS MVP: | Phase | Realistic time | |---|---| | Core product (the one workflow) | 2 to 4 weeks | | Auth (email/password + 1 OAuth provider) | 3 to 5 days | | Basic billing (Stripe Checkout + 3 webhook events) | 2 to 3 days | | Deployment and domain setup | 1 day | | Error tracking and analytics | 1 day | | **Total** | **4 to 7 weeks** | With Cursor and v0, the core product phase can compress to 1 to 2 weeks for straightforward workflows. Auth and billing don't compress much. Edge cases are edge cases regardless of how you write the initial code. The "one more thing" trap extends every MVP by 30 to 50 percent. Every day during development you'll notice something that feels essential. Track each one in your Backlog. Don't build it until the core MVP is live and you have data to justify it.

## MVP Project Management: How to Track Without Overhead MVP project management has one job: keep you building the right things fast, without the overhead of managing the management system. **Two boards.** A Roadmap for features in scope and a Backlog for everything you cut. The Backlog matters. It's where ideas go instead of your head. This frees you to focus without losing track of what you've deferred. **GitHub integration.** Connect your task board to your repository on day one. When a PR is opened, the task moves to In Review. When it's merged, it moves to Completed. The board reflects what's actually built, not what you think is built. **One metric per feature.** Before moving a task from Todo to In Progress, write down what metric it's supposed to move. After it ships, check that metric. If you can't name one, you might not need the feature yet. **Weekly review. Nothing more.** Spend 20 minutes once a week reviewing the board. What shipped? What's blocked? What's next? That's the entire overhead when the board is connected to GitHub and updates itself. AdeptDev handles all of this. Kanban connected to GitHub via webhooks, Vercel deployment status next to your tasks, analytics in the same workspace. Everything you need to know about the state of your MVP in one place.

## Launching an MVP: How to Get Your First Users The launch is not the hard part. Getting users who stick is. **Define success before you launch.** Not "people like it." A specific metric at a specific threshold. "10 users complete the core workflow and 7 return within a week." Binary. Measurable. Decided before a single user touches the product. **Start with people you know.** Your network, communities you're already in, people who told you they had the problem you're solving. They give the most honest feedback and the most benefit of the doubt. They'll tell you when something's broken without leaving. **One channel first.** Pick one. A Show HN post, a specific subreddit, a newsletter. One channel gives clean signal. Multiple channels give noise. Measure what happens, then decide whether to expand. **Watch, don't just ask.** Session replay with PostHog shows you where real users hesitate, where they click things that don't work, where they give up. More valuable than any survey. **Launch when it works, not when it's perfect.** You will never feel ready. Set a launch date before you start building. Ship on that date regardless of whether it feels finished.

## Common MVP Development Mistakes **Building for the user you wish you had.** Most founders imagine a power user who loves everything. Real early users are confused, impatient, and have different mental models than you expect. Build for the confused user. **Not talking to users while building.** A weekly call with one potential user during development is worth more than a month of building alone. You'll catch wrong assumptions before they become wrong features. **Treating the MVP as a commitment.** The MVP is a question, not a promise. If the answer is no, changing direction is the process working correctly. **Waiting until it's perfect.** The mental state of "one more thing before I show people" is permanent. It doesn't resolve. Set a date and ship on it. **Skipping billing.** Paid users use the product more seriously, give more honest feedback, and tell you what they actually need. Free users tell you what sounds good. These are not the same data. **Measuring vanity metrics.** Pageviews and signups are not the test. Activation, retention, and completion of the core workflow are the test.

## What Comes After the MVP A successful MVP means one thing: the assumption was correct enough to keep going. That's all. After the MVP, the question changes. "Is this assumption correct?" becomes "how do we make this reliably better for the users who are already here?" Double down on what's working. Look at the users getting value. What are they doing? What workflow are they using most? Build more of that before adding new workflows. Fix the biggest friction points. Session replay and support conversations surface the same problems repeatedly. Fix those before adding features. Build the infrastructure you deferred. Settings pages, notification systems, admin dashboards, onboarding flows. Now they have real justification. Then shift to growth. Once the product works and users return, the bottleneck moves from product to distribution. Content marketing, partnerships, paid acquisition. These become relevant when you know the product converts. Understanding how to build an MVP correctly is understanding that MVP product development is a learning process, not a delivery process. The delivery never stops.

## Wrap Up MVP development is the discipline of building less, faster, to learn sooner. The best MVPs are not polished products with features removed. They're focused tests of specific assumptions with just enough product to make the test valid. Pick the right MVP type before you write code. Define your success metric before you launch. Use AI tools to compress the build timeline. Keep the task board connected to your codebase so the board reflects reality. If you want your MVP task board, GitHub integration, Vercel deployments, and analytics in one place while you build, check out [AdeptDev](https://adeptdev.io). Free for 7 days.

## What is MVP development? MVP development is the process of building the minimum viable product: the smallest version of a product that tests whether the core assumption behind it is correct. Not the smallest version that looks polished, but the smallest version that proves or disproves the key hypothesis. The goal is to learn whether a specific type of user has a specific problem and will pay to have it solved, before investing months building a full product. ## What are the different types of MVPs? There are six main MVP types: Landing Page MVP (test demand before building anything), Concierge MVP (deliver the value manually), Wizard of Oz MVP (fake automation behind a real interface), Fake Door MVP (add a button that doesn't work yet and track clicks), Single-Feature MVP (build one core feature well), and Piecemeal MVP (combine existing tools to deliver the value proposition). Pick the type that tests your core assumption with the least amount of work. ## How long does it take to build an MVP? For a solo developer building a SaaS MVP, a realistic timeline is 4 to 7 weeks. With AI tools like Cursor and v0, the core product phase can compress to 1 to 2 weeks for straightforward workflows. Auth and billing add another week. The most common reason MVPs take longer is scope creep: building features that don't directly test the core assumption. ## What should an MVP include? The minimum feature set needed to test the core assumption. For a SaaS MVP this typically means the core workflow that delivers the product's value, basic authentication, and enough billing to test whether users will pay. Settings pages, admin dashboards, notification systems, and onboarding flows all get deferred until the core assumption is validated. ## How do I manage an MVP project without overhead? Two Kanban boards (Roadmap and Backlog), GitHub webhook integration so tasks update automatically when you push code, and a weekly 20-minute board review. Before starting any task, write the metric it's supposed to move. After it ships, check that metric. AdeptDev connects the Kanban board to GitHub and Vercel with analytics in the same workspace for $10/month, built specifically for developers moving fast on their own products. ## What metrics should I track for an MVP? Four metrics matter at the MVP stage: activation rate (percentage of signups who complete the core workflow, aim for above 40%), day-7 retention (percentage who return within a week, aim for above 25%), completion rate of the core workflow, and time to first value (under 10 minutes is the target). Define your target numbers before launch, not after. ## How do I launch an MVP and get my first users? Define success before you launch (specific metric, specific threshold). Start with people you know. Pick one channel and measure what happens before expanding. Use session replay (PostHog) to watch real users rather than relying only on surveys. Launch when the core workflow works reliably, not when everything is polished. Set a launch date before you start building and ship on that date.