Why Your MVP Shouldn't Take 6 Months (And It's Not About the Money)

Many first-time founders over-estimate the features they need and under-estimate the time it takes to build them.

Or they make worse mistake: outsourcing MVP planning and estimation to the developer.

I spent two decades building software for founders. I worked with developers, hired developers, ran an agency and even had a handful of my own ventures.

So I have a pass to say this:

MOST DEVELOPERS are AWFUL PLANNERS!

They underestimate the time it takes to build complex software and struggle to “push back” against clients’ requests for more features. Some developers, to preserve cashflow, will accept the stupidest ideas from the founder only to keep billing.

I want to preface with a short story:

A client came to me after 18 months of pure hell.

First, an agency charged him $7k for three months of “Project Analysis and Research” (whatever the hell that means) and then quoted $150k to build the MVP. They knew he was consulting enterprise clients and “value priced” him.

Frustrated, he found a developer on Upwork who promised delivery in 4 months.

Six months later, he was $26k deep, paying $750/month for expensive “scalable” AWS hosting that served zero users, and the developer was still suggesting “more features to add” and “code optimizations”.

The product was nowhere near ready, not even the core functionality.

The software had morphed so much from the original vision that he was ready to quit entirely. Toss it. Take an “L” on Software-as-a-Business and get back to consulting gigs.

As a last resort, he reached out to me via mutual connection. I had a brief 20 min chat with him and he decided to give this one more shot.

Two weeks of emails and couple of calls and with my guidance he wrote his OWN technical spec, which he could hand to developers. He hired a small Ukrainian agency (on my rec.) and they understood clearly what needed to be done.

Two months later: working prototype, under $10k.

Week one of launch: 5 paying business clients. But I got to give this guy credit, he can pickup his phone and drum up business from thin air. (given a working product, of course!)

He finally had a clear plan and the mental clarity to execute it. This is exactly what many founders lack: clarity and it drives them insane.

I am getting ahead of myself.

The Four Horsemen of Extended Development

Look, I could write entire articles about things you already know or heard:

• The Money Drain A long dev cycle of six-month typically costing $150k-$390k vs. $15k-$50k for rapid builds
• Technical Debt - it’s a liability of the spaghetti code that accumulates when founder keeps adding more features and constantly pivoting to brand new ideas
• Scope Creep or the “just one more feature” death spiral. This becomes even more critical in today’s AI era - see 5 hard truths about launching SaaS in the AI era for why traditional development timelines are now a death sentence.
• Market Validation - getting to market fast means getting feedback faster. Some companies with 2-6 week MVPs show 67% higher success rates compared to longer builds.

And I will write those articles in due times, but I want to talk about something FAR MORE IMPORTANT: the silent killer only second or third time founders know: the mental burn out

• You can recover from spending too much money.
• You can refactor bad code.
• You can cut features.

But recovering from project drag that leads to burn out is difficult.

Do NOT kid yourself that the building phase is going to be easy. It wont be.

• You will be absent from your family.
• You will sleep less.
• You will feel frustrated and stress.
• You will have moments of doubts.
• Your health will take toll.
• And you will lose time forever.

I am not here to scare you away from building your product. I am here to tell you what I’ve seen in my career.

The Slow Mental Deterioration

Let’s roleplay a likely scenario (I’ve seen play out too many times to count):

It’s month 5. You’re sitting at your dining room table at 11 PM with your MacBook open to a Slack conversation with your developer who just said - for the third time this month, - “we are almost done on payment integration, next week should be good to go!”

You are out of $16,000. You started with $30,000 and that’s over half of your allocated budget. And you still don’t have a functional product.

You’ve been “building” for four months and you have exactly zero users. Zero feedback. Zero validation that anyone on planet Earth wants what you’re creating.

The doubt isn’t just a thought anymore. It’s a physical sensation in your chest. A weight that gets heavier every week. The nagging thought, “this is way more expensive than I thought it would be” now permanently lives in your head.

The Three Stages of Founder Psychological Collapse

Research shows 93% of founders experience mental health strain, with prolonged pre-launch phases being particularly high-risk periods. Here’s what that actually looks like:

Stage 1: The Creeping Doubt (Months 1-2)

At the beginning you’re excited. You’re building. But as you research competitors, the first traces of doubts appear:

“Wait, they have that feature. Should I also add it?” “What if we need a mobile app too? My competition has one for Android and one for iOS!” “Maybe we should add social login?”

Each question seems reasonable in isolation. But together, they’re eroding your clarity. You started with a simple, clear vision what you want to build. Now you’re distracted by perfection.

Stage 2: Analysis Paralysis (Months 3-4)

The doubt compounds. Without real users to validate (or invalidate) your assumptions, EVERYTHING seems equally important. You can’t prioritize because you have no data.

Your developer asks: “Should we build the advanced search first or the user dashboard?”

You have no idea. So you say “both.” The timeline grows (along with the budget).

You’re researching competitors 2 hours every night, finding new features you “need.” Each new discovery feeds the voice in your head: “I’m building the wrong thing.”

Instead of researching early stages of your competitors, you’re comparing yourself to companies 5-10 years into their business, while you’re on day “- 20” i.e. you haven’t shipped shit yet.

Stage 3: The Existential Crisis (Month 5+)

This is where most founders break.

At this point 80% of the money is gone. You pivoted a handful of times (often scrapping previously written code/features).

You can’t sleep. You’re irritable with your family. You’re frustrated with developer who you feel has you captive.

Your day job duties are slipping, your manager has “the talk” with you about lack of performance.

The original excitement that drove you to start this journey is mostly gone.

Replaced by dread.

In Lean Startup by Eric Ries, then YCombinator’s Sam Altman says “never let the company lose momentum” - but you’ve lost YOUR momentum.

You contemplate “sunk cost fallacy” and wonder if you just need to fold and abandon the whole thing while you haven’t dipped into your savings (or kids college fund).

Even worse? Your developer is losing momentum too. They see the project dragging on indefinitely. Their work becomes performative - “fixing bugs” and “optimizing code” - while doing very little to actually ship. And you suspect they picked up another gig as they are available less and less.

The Psychological Difference: Week 8 vs. Month 5

Let me paint you two pictures:

Week 8 (Rapid Shipping Approach):

It’s 2 AM. You’re refreshing your analytics dashboard. Someone in Australia just signed up. Someone in Germany is actually USING the feature you built last week.

Your heart is racing. You screenshot it and send it to your partner: “HOLY SHIT, PEOPLE ARE USING MY THING!”

Yes, there are bugs. The design is rough. The performance could be better.

But none of that matters because real humans are finding value in something you created. You’re getting feedback. You’re learning what they actually need vs. what you assumed. You have EVIDENCE that you’re not completely delusional.

Every user interaction is fuel. Your first $9/month subscriber validates that people will pay. You gain momentum. Energy. Purpose.

Month 5 (Extended Development Hell):

You’re staring at the same Figma mockups you’ve been tweaking for weeks. Your developer just told you the payment integration needs “one more week” (it’s been three weeks already).

Your savings account is hemorrhaging. You lie awake wondering: “Will anyone even want this when it’s done?”

The doubt is a physical weight on your chest. Every day without real users is another day your assumptions go untested. The voice in your head gets louder: “What if I’m building something nobody wants?”

You’re running on fumes of imagination. And you’re running out of fumes.

The Story Nobody Tells

A few years back, I spoke with a founder who wanted to build “the Hubspot of Beauty Industry.”

He had $10k to spend. I suggested a bare-bones CRM to test the market. He politely declined and hired a cheap agency that promised the full vision for $8k.

Months later: $15k spent across three different agencies, still no launch. He was withdrawing from his 401k to keep funding it.

Two years later: His domain still showed “coming soon.” We chatted. Total damage: $70k. He picked up a second job and taken out loans. Still “perfecting” his MVP.

2025: Project abandoned. Never shipped. He sold the code to someone for pennies.

The cruel irony? His idea was legitimately superior. Better features. Deep market understanding. A truly unique core offering. But none of that mattered without execution - this is exactly why I chose B2B over B2C as a solo founder, where business buyers make logical decisions based on delivered value, not perfect features.

But it didn’t matter. The market moved on. Competitors filled the space.

The real failure wasn’t the product. It was the psychological torture of building in the dark until he had nothing left—not even the will to launch.

What Actually Matters: Feedback Loops for Your Brain

Your brain needs feedback loops to survive the startup journey.

When you ship in 6-8 weeks:

• You get real user data to validate or invalidate assumptions
• Each piece of feedback guides your next decision
• You replace doubt with data
• You maintain momentum and mental clarity

When you take 6+ months:

• You’re making decisions in a vacuum
• Every choice is torturous because nothing is validated
• Doubt compounds into paralysis
• You lose the mental resilience needed for the hard work ahead (marketing, sales, iteration)

Here’s what people don’t tell you: The hardest part of a startup isn’t building the product. It’s getting customers.

If you enter the marketing and sales phase already mentally depleted, already burnt out from months of uncertainty, you’ve lost before you’ve begun.

If you’re demotivated and discouraged (your long dev cycle brewed some product doubts) - you WILL have hard time selling it or promoting it. You will subconsciously convey that the product is not as perfect as you’d like it to be.

On contrary, when you ship “half baked” MVP - you are being transparent with your beta users. You’re inviting them to try and test something new. Something that might not be perfect yet.

The Path Forward: Ship Fast, Stay Sane

HOWEVER, I’m not saying ship garbage. I’m saying ship the CORE solution to ONE problem for ONE specific type of user. Get it in their hands in 6-8 weeks.

Your first users will forgive bugs. They’ll forgive missing features. They’ll forgive rough edges—IF you’re solving a real problem for them.

And here’s the fun part: They WANT to help you succeed. They’ll give you feedback. They’ll tell you what matters. They’ll guide your roadmap with actual data instead of your increasingly panicked assumptions.

Early adopters have strong desire to be there “before it was big”, they want to be part of something, one day they could say, “Yeah, XYZ is HUGE, public stock, mega successful company and I was THERE using them way way before that. I was in their first 5 customers!” Building these relationships with early users is crucial for what I call the circle of trust - turning strangers into advocates for your business.

The Solution (in brief):

• Define your ONE core feature ruthlessly
• Find a developer who can deliver in 6 weeks (if they can’t, find another)
• Launch to a small group of hand-picked (invited) testers
• Iterate based on real feedback
• Enter the marketing phase with energy, not exhaustion
• Win.

The Bottom Line

Extended MVP development isn’t just expensive (though it is!) I will write more about costs and how to contain your budget and not get scammed.

It’s not just technically risky (though technical debt is real—more on that soon).

But for now, remember, delaying to launch is a mental health crisis that kills founders before their startup even launches.

The question isn’t: “Can I ship something good in 6 weeks?”

The question is: “Can I psychologically survive 6 months of building in the dark?”

Most can’t. And that’s why most startups fail. Shipping fast is the sane thing to do. Even if it’s not perfect.

Your mental health is your most valuable asset. Protect it.

Next up: The tactical playbook for shipping your MVP in 6 weeks without getting scammed by developers. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.