TLDR; Kaiden S., an entrepreneurial-minded software engineer who worked for a YC startup, wants to build another expense tracker app while documenting his journey.
Previous post → Day 14 - Started coding a prototype
What have I done?
I have coded up a simple MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with the following features
Login / Sign up with google or apple login
Add / remove transactions
Add / remove bank accounts
Basic calculation of current total balances
Background data synchronization with server
The UI is so shitty that I’m not gonna show you anything yet, because I’m deeply ashamed by it. But it’s at least a version I can start using on my day-to-day basis to learn and build on top of it.
“If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.” - Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Linkedin + Paypal
This is a powerful way of building products in the startup world, as popularized by startup legends like Reid Hoffman. You can read more about it here. Essentially it’s saying that you shouldn’t wait too long to deliver your MVP to users, because it’s almost guaranteed that users would not love your product like you hoped. So better launch early to capture real feedback from users and only build new features as needed.
In my case, I’m already the user of my own product, so I guess it’s fine to just keep it for my own use for now, until I’m satisfied enough with it. This is also why I prefer building products that solves my own problems, rather than problems that I can’t relate with, because I can use it myself and iterate quickly during early stage.
Some learnings / thoughts
I’ve been learning a lot with the ongoing free YC Startup School live lectures. Highly recommended in signing up if you haven’t yet : ) Here’re some of the learnings
Don’t fall in love with your MVP. Fall in love with your customers and their problems. Realize your MVP will change for sure.
Better to have 100 people love your product than 100k people kinda like it. No real successful startup is built on lots of people “kinda” liking it.
When you’re fighting against incumbent large competitors, you’re fighting an asymmetric battle. Rather than trying to reach “feature parity” with your competitor which is impossible with limited resources, figure out an angle where your 3 features would matter more than their 200 features.
Things that should be on your list as a founder
Talking to users / responding to customer support messages
Building features you know your customers will pay for
Getting users to pay for what you've built
Things that probably should not be on your list as a founder
Investor "coffees" (except when you're actively fundraising)
Conferences
Arbitrary technical milestones
Press hits
And way more…
And of course, I’m grateful to have started building this expense tracker app in public, because it forces me to make progress, and to review my approach and learnings on a regular basis.
What’s next
I’ll continue to iterate on my app in terms of features and UI/UX, then I’ll show you guys my product once I’m less ashamed by it : )
Or follow me on Twitter @kaidenio
Stay tuned : )
Best,
Kaiden S.
This is gold
How are you doing with your app?