I am a proponent of building high-quality, well-designed MVPs that will serve you for years as a constructor for your future ideas. This article describes my process for doing so: How to Build an MVP that Will Survive a Pivot—Kavun UA.
However, sometimes, we want to go to market quickly. We are not yet sure if we have already spent dozens of thousands of dollars on developing an MVP, and we just want to test how people would react to the product. In this case, I built a prototype—something fast, mostly copy-pasted, and covering most of the functionality required in an MVP.
If your prototype takes more than 24 active hours to develop, it is not a prototype anymore. In this article, I will describe which tools and websites I use to deliver prototypes as fast as possible.
Use clickable design
A prototype is often not needed to test an idea; a simple clickable design is enough. https://www.figma.com/ is doing an incredible job of handling that. You can create a design and make the button clickable as if it was a real app. You can add animations, login, conditional operators, variables, etc.
After finishing the design, you can put screenshots on the landing page and insert a link to a dynamic demo. The limitations of this method are obvious: it is not a real app, and there is no actual registration process or payment. However, if you want to test if people would use your product, launch a perfect landing with screenshots highlighting your solution's strength. At the end, add a waiting list. Then, launch some ADS and see what the conversion rate is. If the conversion rate is reasonable, you can start building MVP and skip the prototype.
If done correctly, such a design will allow you to transform it into code quickly, and most developers will thank you. To develop such a solution, you would need to hire a website developer and a designer, which could take about $1000 and two weeks of a project.
Use template
Starting to develop something from scratch is usually a big deal, and the initial configuration of a project could take 24 hours. I love websites like https://themeforest.net/ or https://codecanyon.net/, which aggregate many ready-made solutions for startups. If your startup is a copy of something existing for a new market or has a unique twist, you will find a template there.
Be careful with low-quality code while using templates. Before buying anything, make sure that the template has a lot of good reviews and that the development team still supports it. I had terrible luck purchasing a couple of bad-quality templates there; The platform refunded me 100% of the money after the refund request so that you can feel safe there.
Most template developers also provide software development services, so you could directly ask them to modify a template for your needs. Of course, it will cost more money, but you can be sure that they know what they are doing. They can also handle deployment and support processes.
If you can find a template that suits your needs, it will take a week and ~$1000 to launch your idea from 0 to market.
Use no-code
Companies like The Best Way to Build Web Apps Without Code | Bubble, Webflow: Create a Custom Website | No-code Website Builder and FlutterFlow – Build Beautiful, Modern Apps Incredibly Fast! are trying to make software development accessible to non-technical founders. They are doing such a great job that there is a separate market of no-code developers who help nontechnical founders use no-code tools.
No-code platforms have great templates that will cover a lot of startup ideas; if your idea is covered – you are lucky, and you should proceed using no-code. If not, you would need to develop it from scratch, and you would probably need to hire an expensive engineer.
While using no-code, be careful with their pricing model and limitations. On some platforms like Bubble, you would need to pay pre-computing units, which means the more website visits you have, the more you pay. Regarding limitations, some platforms are poorly building adaptive UIs, and some may not support the features you want. I strongly suggest consulting with an experienced no-code developer before starting to do something.
Development of a no-code prototype may be tricky, but if used correctly, you can expect to finish the project in about two weeks, and you would need to pay the developer about $1000.
Use open-source
All expensive enterprise software has a decent open-source alternative. GitHub and Google are the best places to find them. Open source is widely used in the SaaS industry, where you can find an underestimated open-source project and sell a hosted version of it.
While using open source, be careful with licensing. Not all licenses allow you to use the software for commercial purposes, so spend some time reading the license agreement before starting to customize it for your needs.
Most open-source software has excellent tech, and you don’t need to care about evaluating it. Sometimes, tech is so great that the average software developer can’t understand and support it, so you must hire someone with decent experience to set everything up.
If you could find open-source software for your idea, you could get and set it up for free. You would need to pay just for a developer who will execute the setup and customization process. If your software doesn’t need much customization, you can expect about a $2000 budget and a monthly project.
Use API or SaaS
GPT3 itself gave birth to thousands of startups using its API. Tons of APIs may be solving problems you will solve in a way so that you can use them under the hood and sell them as your product. Usually, it is hard to find them, but my primary source of inspiration is Product Hunt, the best new tech product. And Browse software deals for your business. | AppSumo. Those are curated libraries of mostly B2B software that you can utilize to build prototypes fast.
When using APIs or SaaS to build a prototype, be careful with the cost. Most of those are free to start, but once you get some users, you will need to pay a lot of money. Another complexity of APIs is that you still need to build all the code around it.
You don’t need an experienced developer to set up such a product cause most of the functionality is outsourced to someone else. You can use simplistic technologies like Firebase, React, and Node.js to implement all the software parts.
Such a product may take about a month and $4000 in development.
Buy company
If you can not find a decent-quality template, you can try to find a company that is already doing what you need and ask them to buy their software. I have a personal success story with that; buying a company should always be an option on your list. When you buy a company, you instantly get a high-quality code base with a deployment process, an engineering team that can support you for some time, and even marketing materials.
The popular destination is Acquire.com, the #1 Startup Acquisition Marketplace, the biggest startup marketplace I know. Of course, you need a higher budget to buy a company. On average, you have to be ready to pay about $10k for a company with a few users and decent tech. It will take about two weeks to finalize the deal and move everything under your control.
There is a huge advantage to buying a company over starting from scratch because you eliminate all technical risks associated with developing a product from scratch. Many non-technical founders underestimate the time and effort it takes to create a product. I know dozens of startups that developed products for months and then threw them away because the quality was terrible. Even though $10k sounds like a ton of money, it could save you much more.
The most important thing when buying a company is to make sure its users are real, and its tech is high-quality. You can’t evaluate it yourself, so please find some technical friends to help you. Feel free to text me at yev@kavun.org.ua if you plan to buy a company and need someone to do tech diligence. I can do it even for free; it is an enjoyable process.