How long is too long when building your MVP?

Spending six months on an MVP can be too long, especially when speed to market is crucial in the startup world. Outsourcing can significantly reduce development time, allowing you to focus on strategy and market entry while professionals handle the technical work. While outsourcing involves costs, the opportunity cost of a delayed market entry could be much higher, potentially letting competitors get ahead.

Considering your long work hours and the competitive landscape, outsourcing seems like a viable option to expedite your MVP development. Services like AutopilotNext specialize in transforming ideas into functional MVPs within just 60 days (under $5k), helping you launch quickly and efficiently while maintaining control over your project.

Since I have no idea what you are building I have no idea if working on it for 6 months is long or short :)

There is no stress at all. Take all the time you need.
We started to build era.sh 2 years ago, and now we are in open beta.

Besides our main jobs, it's super intense to build a full-scale desktop app for Windows, Linux, and macOS, but it's worth every minute.

I think a month or just over is the ideal time. I put up a landing page for madepublic.io then released the beta about 4-5 weeks later (4 days ago).

The time is ideal because you can keep motivation going for a month before seeing no output and it gives you time to refine things to have a nice initial launch while gathering feedback by building in public

Take 1 week break from your dev job, develop MVP in this week and Validate the idea,
If this idea works spend 2-4hours for this side project

I think this entirely depends on what you're building, i.e. the complexity required (as others stated).

Your 2 points are extremely valid (control + savings).
Your point about someone being "quicker" and overtaking you, not so valid point in my opinion. Someone with a bigger team and deeper pockets can do this at any stage, even post-launch, and crush you. But if that's your concern, one more reason to launch ASAP.

Another factor to consider, apart from complexity, is that what you want to achieve with your MVP. Do you want to just validate an idea? As the acronym stated - MINIMAL viable product. It should be something that does 1 specific thing extremely well to see whether you should devote more time and resources. I believe for most people, this is what an MVP should be. Seems like 6+ months is too long for that and could be done quicker/simpler. Ask yourself - does your product do 1 core things/feature, central to solving the problem of your users? If yes, then the best the time to launch was yesterday.

You’re going to burn yourself out if you haven’t already. You need to take a break.

If you feel like your product idea’s time has come and that it’s likely there are well-resourced competitors building the same thing, then you either have to quit your job and focus on your project full-time, or just let it go.

On the other hand, if your product is in an established space and you’re just carving out your slice of the pie, than don’t worry too much about how long it takes. Go slow and steady, get it right, and launch when you’re ready, not when some lean startup dogma says you should launch.

it may or may not be long however your reasons for working on that long seem to be problematic

But now I'm concerned someone else is going to come along with the same idea as mine and get it to market quicker (always a problem I guess with SaaS)

Even after you launch it will be copied by someone if some one else thinks its a good idea its kind of inevitable so don't use that as basis for deciding.

It is pretty insane to work on day job for 60-70 hours and than go on to work on something on the side. Reduce your work hours to something sane (35-45 hours) otherwise side project or not you will surely burnout yourself.

You can only spend something you have since you don't have time you have to spend money if you want to ensure that project sees the light of day by the way outsourcing is not necessarily guranteed to produce results so you may end up wasting both time and money.

I just published a blog post about this today - we spent around 8 weeks on our MVP, but if you roll in the MLP and the commercial release work it was nearly 9 months start-to-finish before we had something we could start charging money for.

Like you we were doing it around our day jobs, and I think you can cut yourself some slack in that respect - it's okay for timelines to be elongated when you have other commitments and your bootstrapping around them.

I wouldn't worry about someone stealing your idea. This is only likely to happen if and when you have a decent client list, PR & marketing etc.

Maybe you can partner up with another part timer to speed things up?

The biggest risk is probably not someone else coming along with the same idea, but rather you getting tired of the project and no longer wanting to work on it.

How much longer do you think you could work on it without getting any feedback before your motivation is gone? If it's going to take longer, then getting some help is probably a good idea.

Since you're working at a regular day job, I don't think 6 months is that long given you only have limited time to work. FWIW, ircc Michael Seibel says that if you're MVP takes longer than a month, then it's not a MVP.

Instead of jumping to outsourcing, I'd suggest checking:

• If you keep adding new features to build (scope creep)
• If you're spending time perfecting the UX (you can instead delegate not-perfect things to quick wins in a future iteration)
• If all the features you're building are essential to your product (you can see the impact-effort matrix to identify quick wins and incremental changes that you can instead work on at a later time)

Some founders take 2 weeks from idea to MVP and achieve their success, while some take over a year working full time on their idea to MVP and succeed.

Every founder's journey is unique.

Ideally yes, the faster you can ship, the better.

But if you want to spend money only because you want have some kind of first mover advantage then my strong opinion is "Don't". It's good if others enter in market before you, it's validation on your idea and you also understand the market better just by observing competitor. You can then, launch better version of your product as well.

I would have set a proper deadline for launch and if I am unable to meet my own deadline, then def would hire other people.

I don't think 6 months is that long. We're so used to hearing people get their MVPs to market in ridiculously quick times (days or weeks) that we've lost any real sense of what is 'normal'. Don't judge what you're doing based on what others have/are doing. If you want to keep it your own then keep working on it and don't worry about the time.

MVP is a way to validate your assumptions. If it worth to wait 6 months before you understand if it was worth to work on this project? IMO way tol long.
I suppose that you're talking about 1st version of product. If you already validated your concept, then its not too long to build 1st version taking into consideration your capacity.

There is this saying “Startups Die of Suicide, Not Murder”. If you feel like taking too long, try to limit the scope and publish asap. This way you will learn a lot and you can prioritise the functionalities to add later on (saying this without knowing exactly what your building).

The time necessary depends on whats is it you are working on and what resources you have at hand. If you have a full time job and this endeavour is you alone the time will be very different if you have a team.

My advice would be to re-think what is the MVP and focus just on that, no add-ons. I once built an MVP with a team of 3 that took us 2 years, that was long, too long in fact. When we came out we were outdated.

Hey there! I'll share my own experience. I being a 2x founder of 2 VC backed startups, I believe I am the right guy to answer it. So, here I go -

For SaaS and software - It takes 20-30 days to build that "Minimum Viable Product". Take help of your nerd friend or DIY, doesn't matters. If you are able to build that MVP on time, then even copying won't matter. Also, this is the right time to find your co-founder maybe.

PS - > Durations might vary based on scale & size of product you are building and problem you are solving.

I believe the intuition is that there is a correlation between the complexity of the solution (assuming it is correct) to the price point (excluding outliers of course).
So, if you want 2-3$ it should be perceived as a simple solution. If you ask for 50$ that is something heavy in technology and features and perceived underlying costs. (for example analytics software etc).

May be you can revisit the features you are looking at MVP and cut down some of the complex ones or may be dont need to automate some parts yet. A landing page with a form will give you an idea about the receptibility of the idea and your solution. It will be worth testing waters before jumping in it.

You have been working on it for 6 months, and it's too long to prepare an MVP unless it's a complex project. First, define what you mean by MVP. Minimum Viable Product or Maximum? The minimum should be something like the core feature.

Let's say your app is about creating beautiful screenshots then your MVP would be like an app where users can just take screenshots and make it some sort of beautiful and nothing more.

If your app is like a tweet scheduler then you can focus on only How to write a tweet & Schedule it and forget all other features.

If you can not have any spare time then it's better to fix it first. In my case, I also have a day job but for my idea-based product, It's somehow I get a few times in a day to work on it. I might be up at night or some other days I might get up early.

Having no spare time is not the main problem. The problem lies in the mindset & excitement. If you can't think of anything except your amazing idea, you'll always find some time to work on it.

the secret is to LAUNCH as fast as you can with a just minimum functional product.
you must understand what people want...because they dont know what they want themselves.
Good Luck!

Who is doing the marketing/advertising/selling to customers? Because that's way more important, as I have found out the hard way.

I’d say 4-6 weeks is the ideal for building a MVP. Remember the goal of the MVP to validate and test your product with your audience. You can take longer of course, but that will mean the whole timeline will be longer.

I've been in this situation before and I am building https://midicircuit.com a native app that integrates with multiple hardware in the music space. Given the nature of the project, it's quite challenging and time consuming. However, after participating in Apple's Entrepreneur Camp, having user feedback and initial conversations with big brands in the space I felt validated and decided to spend more money on it - I already had spent a bit working on it for a few months and paying for a designer. I then decided to add a iOS engineer who then learned macOS with me / the codebase. I eventually added a backend freelancer that helps me on smaller tasks here and there and I take the meatier tasks as to not burn money in things not so well defined or that need more exploration.

It's been a year and a half now in total and we are launching end of September if all goes as planned - we've been in beta for a couple months.

Along the way I had to prioritise my health as a whole: workout regularly, eating well, mental health and having a social life.

I also had to keep contracting to support the Engineers and myself - I take 30% or so in dividends and and keep the rest in the business for taxes and paying freelancers. Contracting has been the best way for managing money and cashflow for the project - I think of it as my VC fund lol my investor is my client (for now).

I wanted to share this in hope you can learn something from my experience and also that you know if you have something you believe in then just keep going as slow as it is. Don't sacrifice your well being - sometimes you might but overall don't. If you have the means to then maybe getting some help can be useful. Happy to grab a coffee and chat if you are around East London / Hackney / Shoreditch and so on.

Working for 60-70 hours in day job and then working on your SaaS is so tough.

Someone implementing the idea just 2-3 months before you and taking all the market share is only a myth in most cases.

But looks like you have been under a lot of stress. If you have a day job that pays you fine and you are dev, it's okay to outsource as long as you are in full control of code and architecture. Or may be get a co-founder too.

I was once in the same position as you and spent almost a year in total on my MVP. I didn't have a choice because I have a full-time job and family, so was only working on it 2-6 hours per week. Outsourcing wasn't an option because I didn't have the money. I don't think the length of time really mattered in the end. The MVP got good feedback but in the end, I realized I just didn't have the time or inclination to scale it. I guess it depends on WHY you want to get it to market quickly. Yes, someone else could build the same/similar product but as you say that's always going to be a problem regardless of what stage you're at, and if you think you have a USP then what does it matter?

It is hard to estimate what is too long because it depends on your technical knowledge, the type of project you are working on, the time you have to work on your project, and the strategy you have chosen as an MVP (for example, maybe you just used an image or video as your MVP and now is creating a prototype of the actual product).

I have three products on the market today, and each MVP took a different time (from weeks to months) for various reasons:

• Rapid Mockup (https://rapidmockup.net) - MVP was straightforward and took two weeks to complete. But before developing the prototype, I made an image of how the product would be and spread it on some Facebook groups to measure the interest
• VoteHub (https://vote-hub.app) - It took a month to release the first version
• Vemto (https://vemto.app) - This was the most complex product I developed, and it took about six months to release a closed beta. Because it is a product aimed at programmers and generates code, many complex parts need to work together and correctly for the demo to work. However, I deeply understood what the software required to be, as I am also a programmer, so I can consider myself a user of the product.

I believe that the correct time to launch the MVP is when you have a simple product but at the same time enough to convince someone that it solves their problem. There will be bugs, and it won't be complete, but it's valuable enough to capture the interest of Early Adopters.

My tip is to involve early adopters as soon as possible.

How many features does your MVP have? If the answer is one, then 6+ months might just be how long it needs to take, given your available time. If the answer is more than one, then consider stopping after your first feature. Sure- customers / potential customers might give you feedback that it needs more features, but at least they'll be able to tell you which ones. That's better than you taking a guess which features are required. Go back to your potential customers after every new feature and let them tell you when it's ready.

Is it taking forever because the tasks are hard or you find yourself working a bit on this, a bit on that never reaching the imaginary line of deliverable-ish ?

I fight this second scenario using a management tool (you, like me, are a software dev, so you can think about trello, jira, asana ...): I am actually in a project that I am not creating as a SaaS but as a "facilitator" tool for my next business idea, and using Github project had a tremendous impact on my delivery rate. It's not about being too picky with whatever task that helped me a lot, but this time (first time for a side personal project) it game me the chance to plan reasonably small deliverables (at the bugfix granularity, too) which I am consistently closing, lowering the distance from an acceptable "end" and raising the reward I am having from the whole process.

You might be interested in what I just launched. https://kocobee.com allows you to start validating your idea in minutes, and provides you with all the analytics you would need to determine if an idea is worth your time or not. Take a look!

I've been building https://unbundle.app for almost like two months and I'm now ready for beta launch.

Get a sale within one month.

Hi, I am a developer as well, If you need someone can work with you on the project you can contact me.
@YBeqqal

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