Most builds that go sideways don't go sideways in the code. They go sideways in the planning, because someone jumped from "I have an idea" straight to "let's start building." Here are the five questions we walk every founder through before we commit to a build.

1. Who is the one person this is for?

"Everyone" is not a user. The first version of any product should have exactly one target user in mind — specific enough you could name a real person. If you can't name them, you're not ready to build. You're ready to interview.

2. What would make them pay for it?

Building something free and hoping it converts later is a longer, more expensive road than most founders expect. If you can't articulate the moment a user would pull out their credit card, your feature set is probably too broad.

3. What's the smallest version that proves the idea?

The MVP is not "everything I imagined, but stripped down." It's "the one feature that, if it works, proves this is worth building more of." Most founders underscope this by 10x. We push back on that.

4. How will the first 100 users find it?

This is a product question, not a marketing one. If your answer is "we'll figure that out later" or "social media," the product itself probably needs to be different. Distribution has to be baked into the design.

5. What does success look like in six months?

Vague goals ("growth," "traction") produce vague builds. Specific goals — 200 weekly active users, $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue, one enterprise contract — produce focused builds. We shape scope backward from the six-month goal.

Why we ask before we quote

The quote you get from us reflects the answers to these questions. A focused MVP for a specific user is cheap. A kitchen-sink platform for "everyone" is expensive and usually fails. We'd rather talk you into the cheaper, better path before we ever write a line of code.

Start with the quote quiz and we'll walk through the rest on a call.