What I learned launching my first MVP.

Today I launched the MVP of my first app: Search For Me.

It's a smart PDF reader that understands the content of your files. You can open up one or several PDFs, ask a question, and the AI will read through all the files to find the answer.

I'm by no means an expert entrepreneur, but maybe someone less experienced than me can benefit from what I've learned:

It will take more time than you think. Even if you think that it will take more time than you think.

I purposely searched for a problem that I already knew how to solve for two reasons:

• I wanted to ship quickly.
• I didn't want to invest in learning more technical stuff so I would have time to learn the business part of the Indie Hacking world.

I already knew the AI theory behind the solution, I already coded many neural networks, and I already knew how to make the app (mostly, not the details) and it still took twice the time I thought It would take (a little over two months).

Work hard, but don't beat yourself If you don't satisfy your imaginary deadlines. Making progress every day is enough.

Validate the idea with minimum effort!

This idea is the "scratch your own itch" kind of thing. I read and I search on PDFs a lot (researching). This app will save me precious time and effort in searching for concepts and ideas on PDFs. Just to be sure, I asked several people with an "early adopter profile", and everybody said to me: "Wow, awesome!" or "It would be useful". So I took the chance to build the MVP.

I spent a week thinking about how I can validate this idea without having to code the AI and the app. I couldn't figure it out. The closest thing that I came out with is an assistant (an actual person) that looks through your files.
So I rolled up my sleeves and started coding. If you can, try to avoid programming on the validation phase.

The idea isn't validated yet, I just released the MVP today! But I won't work on new features until I get real market validation. That is until I get a few dozen happy beta testers, and several users pay me for the next version of the app.

Start promoting right away, but for real!

I have to confess that I knew that this is an important step, and I still kind of skip it. Yes, I did the landing page and put something out there on Reddit and Twitter, but that is it. And for that, now I have less than 10 beta testers to give me feedback.

In my mind, I had the idea that I should promote it when the MVP was ready because I will have something to show. But now I have the MVP and no users, so I still don't know If this is a valid idea to work on.

I should've been promoting the app more. That is why now my main goal is to promote the app and find out if it is worth the time to keep working on it.

Log every step of the journey.

I have a little notebook right beside my monitor. Every day I add a few things to do on the day or the next day. It is important to use it as a diary but only for work. Like a mechanical engineer of a factory would have.

This habit helped me:

• To stay organized.
• To stay on top of the objective of the day.
• To appreciate the amount of work that I do every week.

Validate that you can manage the technical difficulty

This is the one thing that I think I did right. Before I started the development of the app, I ran through a few mental simulations of what I would do. And for every crucial step, I made a stand-alone project where I only worked to accomplish that step (usually one or two days per step).

This served me as a validation of my capacity for accomplishing the final goal before investing a lot of dev time. And by the time I started developing the app, I already solved all the problems ahead, making my days an effortless developing walk.

Recap

• It will take more time than you think. Even if you think that it will take more time than you think.
• Validate the idea with minimum effort.
• Start promoting right away.
• Log every step of the journey.
• Validate that you can manage the technical difficulty.

If you have any questions or just want to talk, don't hesitate to reach through my twitter or IH profile!

Have a great day!!

What do you think about the post? Was it useful? Is my English weird or hard to read?