

Ask HN: What are you willing to cut for an MVP/first version running on the web? - hoodoof

Testing? CUT!<p>Security? CUT!<p>Anything but the barest bones features? CUT!<p>Backups? CUT!<p>Monitoring? CUT!<p>An attractive user interface? CUT!<p>Paid offerings? CUT!<p>User documentation? CUT!<p>What are you willing to cut to get the first version of your software up and running on the Internet?
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jeffmould
I take it these are things you choose to elect and not things you are saying
someone should cut. What can and cannot be cut from an MVP/first version is
going to depend greatly on the type of product you are launching in general.

Using your list here are my opinions on each item:

1\. Testing - in depth testing can be reduced greatly, but at least some
minimal testing should be conducted. Especially if you have users signing up,
taking user input, or processing payments.

2\. Security - again, this one is going to vary greatly on what the product is
exactly.

3\. All but barest bone features - goes for any MVP

4\. Backups - backups are cheap and easy to setup. No reason you can't do at
least a minimal back of your data.

5\. Monitoring - simple and basic setup, even using something like PagerDuty
or Pingdom.

6\. An attractive user interface - agree with you here.

7\. Paid offerings - I used to be a strong believer in launch free plans to
start and add paid offerings later. But if your eventual business model is to
offer paid plans then you should start with something from the get go. Setting
up Stripe is simple and you can be up and running within a day.

8\. User documentation - cut away and add later. A FAQ section is not
frequently asked questions if you don't have any users frequently asking
questions :)

So to answer your question, what I am willing to cut, or how much of something
I willing to cut, all depends on the specific project.

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viraptor
I'm not sure how much you want to cut from each, but here are my reactions to
some points:

Security: What do you mean? Full audit: not useful. Getting basic TLS cert,
copying default-secure nginx config from previous service, not intentionally
breaking things your framework provides with an on/off switch. Usually that
takes less time than setting up your own solutions.

Backups: If you have any user-created data, "crontab; tar -zcf ...; s3cmd sync
..." \- this is literally 5 minutes of work to set up primitive backup that
will save you when stuff is on firew.

Monitoring: Pingdom is free for a month - enough before you need actual
monitoring.

Those 3 points can be done to an MVP level in ~20 minutes. Why cut them?

------
aaronbrethorst
> Paid offerings? CUT!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. No. My MVPs are essentially a Bootstrap UI wrapped around
user accounts and the Stripe SDK, plus as little extra code as I can write.

~~~
hoodoof
Have you launched many times on that formula?

