The 3 MVP Signals That Save You Time, Money, and Regret

Six months of work.

Full backend. Beautiful UI. Paid ads.

Stripe subscriptions. Real time reports, PDF downloads.

Zero traction.

A founder brought me in to build a SaaS MVP - a people search engine with layered data, AI fancy features, premium upsells.

The idea sounded validated. Team was hyped and excited.

They even called it future "flagship product". You know, the one that push the whole company and pay salaries…

And still nothing…

No conversions. No user retention. Just a bounce after bounce.

Not because the idea was bad - but because we skipped 3 hard questions.

🔥 The 3 MVP Signals That Could Have Saved the Project

If you want to build an successful MVP in 2-3 months, without overspending. These are your signal checks.

No mockups. No landing pages. Just brutal clarity.

This is useful for both founders and software developers.

Signal #1 - Do people want this badly enough to pay today?

The idea: a tool to search for people and get premium background data.

We assumed demand. Built the full stack.

Ran ads → got clicks → got questions like:

That one sentence said it all.

What to do instead?

→ Run manual cold outreach

→ Pitch it in DMs

→ Try preselling with nothing but a landing page or a Google Doc

If you can’t get one person to pay before you build, you won’t get 1,000 after.

Signal #2 - Can one person own the product decision?

This project has 3 PMs in six months.

One didn't know Stripe and Analytics. One didn't know product. One was designer promoted to PM.

The founder couldn't let go. The roadmap changed weekly.

We reworked features for weeks, chasing "what" felt important.

Result? Team burn out and zero direction.

What to do instead:

→ Appoint one clear owner with veto power

→ Simplify priorities to revenue-first and user feedback

→ Don’t confuse motion with progress

A good MVP doesn’t need a big team. It needs one mind in charge.

Signal #3 - Can users pay you in under 60 seconds?

We built:

✔️ Previews

✔️ Filters

✔️ Multi-step data aggregation

✔️ PDF exports

...before having Stripe working.

By the time the payments were live, trust was already lost.

What to do instead:

→ Stripe or Gumroad working by week 1

→ Manual delivery is fine

→ Optimize onboarding before dashboards

Until someone pays, your startup isn’t real

💡 Bonus Insight: Paid ads don’t fix a broken funnel.

After launch, we ran Google Ads expecting validation.

We got clicks. We got zero sales. Why? Because the funnel didn’t convert.

Users didn’t trust the product, didn’t feel urgency, and didn’t see the value.

What we should’ve done:

→ Post in Reddit threads, LinkedIn groups

→ Offer to do reports manually for early users

→ Iterate based on real conversations, not analytics

If it doesn’t sell in a DM, it won’t sell on a landing page.

🧭 Desired Outcome: Build MVPs that work in 2-3 months, without wasting time or money.

I now help SaaS founders do this right:

✔️ Validate with real conversations

✔️ Build only what people pay for

✔️ Ship in weeks, not quarters

If you’re an tech entrepreneur needing help with building MVP, please fill this questionnaire.