I love this story, but for somewhat different reasons than most.<p>It highlights that the true business driver is that personal interconnectedness: author's friend had good relationships with both restaurant managers and drivers. <i>This</i> is what has allowed an MVP to be successful, not the kludgy "product".<p>Sure, this product still needed to be built for people to be willing to continue to work together, but businesses of the sort have survived for years on spreadsheets and similar "implementations".<p>Some of these constraints do not hold on the internet, but you still need to catch the attention of the right folk to get that word-of-mouth moving (which is why we see so many "Show HN" posts here: there're plenty of people here who can do that for others).
Okay folks! Jumping in to thank everyone for reading my story. I really didn't expect it to resonate with so many and I am so happy (and slightly terrified) that it did. Wow!<p>Main reason I wrote it was to keep reminding myself that resources, and especially time, are limited. As a developer, it's easy to spend all your time on your pet project and think it's free and there's no harm. I fall for that all the time. But it's never free and yes, there is actual harm. Think of all the other projects you never launched. All the moments with loved ones you never had.<p>Using creativity instead of all your time is just like using an elegant algorithm* instead of brute-forcing it.<p>Notes:<p>* I am a (primarily) front-end developer, don't know a single algorithm<p>** Thanks @jeremylevy for sharing my story here, I would never dare to
I like this story but I must say it leaves me with more questions than answers. How did he get restaurants to sign on and trust him enough to prepare food for 1 month without payout? Assuming "based on existing relationships" I have to wonder his former employer didn't care about taking his rolodex and directly poaching customers? What about couriers? How did they handle "no couriers available" or a spike in demand? If someone places a delivery order and it turns out there's no one to deliver it in the next hour, that's a problem. What about disputes, refunds, missing items, "this isn't what I ordered" etc.? The all-cash nature of the business makes clear this was not a US based business where that would likely have been a non-starter.<p>Very cool story but it's hard for me to really understand it without knowing how the business actually worked and made money. I assume it was a very different market from USA and so economics are very different (cheaper labor, less regulation etc.). Would love to know the name of the business to see the outcome.
I like the article. I am the kind of person who thinks things hundreds times before acting, so it would probably taken me weeks just to settle for an architecture which would probably been overkill for an MVP.<p>Lesson to learn: not everything should be planned as a complex enterprise app.
Very nice, being limited or constrained with resources is not necessary a bad thing rather it empowers the mind to work with what's available and see options that won't be seen before.
I really like this story!<p>> I said I could build it over the weekend. It was Friday.<p>I wonder how long the ideation phase took. I know a fair number of people, myself included, are bad at defining "true" MVPs, and it takes time to cut an idea down to the bare minimum. I would definitely not be able to do that AND implement it in a weekend.
If anyone needs a similar app/system you can try your luck with this defunct startup's code I open sourced a few years ago: <a href="https://github.com/Purple-Services" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Purple-Services</a> (on-demand gas delivery app)
Fun read. You're a good friend.<p>I assume there was some additional context about the order in the form that the restaurant filled out, to assist in the end-of-month bookkeeping?<p>And unless you built reporting into the MVP, I bet your friend got to learn how to use some kind of database GUI (e.g. phpMyAdmin) and/or basic queries?<p>>The app would assign the order to a free courier, triggering an email. Their Gmail was our mobile app!<p>>The courier would then pick it up, deliver, take cash on delivery, and mark themselves as “free” again.<p>This tripped me up for a second. In this context, "free" indicates that the courier was available to pick up an order and make the delivery.
This reminds me of a podcast Ben Orenstein was on where he talks about something similar. Made a big difference in how I build/think about side projects.<p><a href="https://fullstackradio.com/101" rel="nofollow">https://fullstackradio.com/101</a>
“At the end of the day the couriers would bring in the cash, minus their cut.
At the end of the month, my friend would wire the money to the restaurants, minus his cut.”<p>Clearly these guys had a huge amount of trust amongst each other.
This is a great example of a real mvp and targeting work towards solving problems first and foremost. It would be a boon for the world if our industry in general worked more like this.
Awesome story. I should start working on some of my ideas.<p>I have paralysis outside of work. At work I get done whatever needs doing, but on my own project I get stuck at picking stack and debating architecture.......when in reality none of that matters if the projects goes nowhere at all.<p>Thanks to your story I'm going to try scaling my ideas down to bare minimum and building from there as needed, however, getting an app even if it involves making spaghetti.
I like the KISS principle applied here. I'm guilty of over-engineering. Once I worked on a project where we processed a lot of very large XML files ... and we set up a distributed application with Akka! We spent a couple of days to figure out the most clever way to listen for file system changes at the OS level. It was just crazy to read and process a bunch of XML files. A story like the one told here is a good reminder that in many cases a simple solution is enough (at least for a start).
I really, really love this story.<p>It is another version, and more relatable I might add, of Reid Hoffman saying "if you aren't embarrassed by your first version you have launched too late." (<a href="https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904</a>)<p>Terrific storytelling, and sadly, 99% of founders will never get past their narcissism and just launch it.
I hate that the goal of all the entrepreneurs here is an exit. No one is better suited to run your company than you, no matter what BS financiers tell you.
With help of some admin form builder/boilerplate, yes, this is absolutely possible with high quality.<p>Thanks for the story from real experience.
I agree and I had an idea recently that I haven’t acted on but it has descoped from “should I is hasura?” to “I probably don’t even need a site at all, but a single HTML file will be handy enough validate this” in 2 hours of insomnia.<p>Talking to the submitted article: It took a weekend sure. But it also took developing a friendship over years.
Your friend is the right person to make friends with.
He was able to sell a crude form you can build in a weekend and bootstrap a business out of it.<p>I can find plenty of students happy to build a simple prototype, but in my life I met less than 5 people who were able to turn a few HTML pages or even a full fledged product into money.
Always important to remember the code is only ever the implementation of an idea.<p>Instead of thinking of MVPs to prove an idea, startups should be ideas that are Known To Work and the MVP more like this - the actual minimum needed to connect a knowledgeable user to a well-trodden business action.
Another take away is as always build what is actually needed. In this case it's a business for businesses and they do not care for your polish, your logo, and how nice your UI is. They want to get things done and not have anything slow them down.
I wish we would stop focussing on MVP. This is the easy part. Sure it needs to be nailed, but the hardest part is finding engineers for the last 5 years if bugfixing at the end of the product’s lifecycle…
<i>So we “scaled down” all the way to B2B. Turns out, more than a few restaurants in town would gladly handle the sales and marketing themselves and keep 100% of the order value minus fixed delivery fees.</i><p>What value does this MVP offered, bookkeeping orders? Couldn't the restaurants just contact the courier directly too? Looks like the restaurants were already doing it.<p>I'm assuming the burden of filling up the web form would be the same as contacting the courier. In many places couriers will use their own cash to pay for the order, so the restaurant gets the payment immediately.
> But when all you have is your creativity, you might end up with something much better, something you would never expect.<p>I love it, I just love it
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