From blank repo to something people actually use.
Most MVPs don't fail because the code was bad. They fail because someone spent nine months building the wrong thing carefully. I ship the smallest version that can be proven wrong, put it in front of real users, and build on whatever survives.
Free 30-min call · You leave with a scope either way
Shipped 0 → 1Real, live
AI Kaptan
AI-native product studio + 15,000+ AI tools directory
EmaReach AI
Cold outreach under AI Kaptan — 6,000 emails/day across 30 domains
Social Kaptan
AI social media management under AI Kaptan, shipped 0 → 1
Project Mart
Mentoring platform — 700+ builders taught 1:1
I don't just build products for people — I run one as a business, which is why I'm blunt about scope.
In short
0 → 1 product development takes an idea from nothing to a working product with real users — scoping, design, full-stack build, launch and the telemetry to tell you whether it worked. The hard part was never the code. It's deciding what to leave out so you find out quickly whether anyone wants it.
- Focused MVPs in four to eight weeks, fixed from $5,000
- Scoping, design and full-stack build by one person
- Launch-ready: auth, payments, deploy, analytics
- Code and accounts in your name from day one
A product, not a pile of tickets
At 0 → 1 the bottleneck isn't engineering capacity. It's decisions — and one person holding the whole picture makes them faster than a team holding pieces.
Scoping that cuts
The most valuable thing I do before writing code is talk you out of two thirds of the feature list. An MVP's job is to buy information fast — every feature that doesn't test the risky assumption is delay you paid for.
Full-stack build
Front end, back end, database, auth, payments, deploy. One person holding the whole picture, which at this size is faster than a team holding pieces of it.
Interface design
Design and engineering in the same head. For 0 → 1 that's an advantage — the design responds to what's actually cheap to build, and the build responds to what actually matters visually.
Instrumented from day one
Analytics and error tracking wired in before launch, because an MVP with no telemetry can't answer the question you built it to ask.
Launch-ready, not demo-ready
Real auth, real payments, real error handling and a deploy pipeline. The gap between 'it works on my machine' and 'a stranger can pay for it' is where most side projects die.
Yours from day one
Code, infrastructure, domains and keys in your accounts, in your name. Documented and handed over so any engineer can take it forward.
The point is to buy information
Everything about how I scope follows from this one idea, so it's worth being explicit about it.
Build the riskiest assumption first
Every idea has one thing that, if false, kills it. Usually it's 'people will pay for this', not 'this is technically possible'. Build the thing that tests that — nothing else earns its place in v1.
Six months isn't an MVP
If the timeline is long enough that the answer arrives too late to act on, you've scoped a product, not an experiment. Four to eight weeks keeps the answer useful.
Features are a cost, not an asset
Everything you build is something you maintain, explain and eventually delete. The feature list you arrive with is almost always the wrong one — that's not an insult, it's just what happens before real users exist.
Ugly and launched beats polished and hidden
Design matters, and it matters most after you know what you're designing. Before that it's decoration on a guess.
Where I'm wrong for you
The honest limits
I'm one person. That's an advantage at 0 → 1 — fewer handoffs, faster decisions, nobody protecting a scope estimate. It stops being an advantage the moment you need parallel teams, a mobile app and a data platform at once.
If your product is already working and the job is scaling it to a large organisation, that's 1 → n work and you want a team, not me. I'll say so on the first call rather than take the project and find out together.
Also worth saying: if you don't have access to customers, no MVP fixes that. Distribution is the harder half, and it isn't something I can build for you.
Four products, blank repo to live
Not a portfolio of client logos — products I built and, in one case, still run every day.
AI Kaptan
AI-native product studio + 15,000+ AI tools directory
EmaReach AI
Cold outreach under AI Kaptan — 6,000 emails/day across 30 domains
Social Kaptan
AI social media management under AI Kaptan, shipped 0 → 1
Project Mart
Mentoring platform — 700+ builders taught 1:1
I've also mentored 700+ builders 1:1 through Project Mart — which mostly taught me that the technical part is rarely what stops people shipping.
Where 0 → 1 work fits
Six situations where this shape of engagement tends to make sense.
Founder with an idea, no engineer
You know the customer and the problem cold. You need someone who can turn that into something they can actually use — and tell you what to cut.
Funded team needing speed
You have a runway and a thesis to test. Hiring takes three months; the test shouldn't wait for it.
Internal tool that outgrew the spreadsheet
The process works but the spreadsheet is now load-bearing and slightly terrifying. Turn it into something real.
AI product that needs the product part
The model works in a notebook. It now needs auth, billing, an interface and everything else that makes it a business.
Rescue of a stalled build
An agency left, a contractor vanished, or the prototype hit a wall. I'll audit it and tell you honestly whether to finish or restart.
Validation before you commit
You don't want a product yet — you want to know if you should have one. Smallest possible thing that can be proven wrong.
Agency vs offshore vs me
All three build software. They differ on who decides what to cut — which at 0 → 1 is the decision that matters most.
| Agency | Offshore shop | Working with me | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical MVP cost | $30k–$150k | Advertised low | From $5k fixed |
| Who makes the decisions | A PM relaying to devs | You, in tickets | The person building it |
| Will they cut scope | Scope is revenue | Rarely — you spec it | That's the first call |
| Design included | Yes, as a handoff | Usually not | Same person |
| Launch-ready or demo | Launch-ready | Often a prototype | Launch-ready |
| Scales to a big team | Yes | Yes | No — I'll tell you |
Agency and offshore figures are typical July 2026 benchmarks · Verify any provider directly
Cut, build, launch, learn
Scoping call (free)
30 minutes on the customer, the problem and the riskiest assumption. We work out the smallest thing that could prove you wrong. Most of the value here is in what we agree to leave out.
Fixed scope & quote
A written scope, timeline and fixed price. Anything that doesn't test the assumption goes on a 'later' list — which is a real document, not a polite way of saying never.
Build in the open
You see it deployed and changing from week one, not at a reveal. Feedback while it's cheap to act on, which is the whole point of building this way.
Launch & learn
Live, instrumented, and in front of real users. Then we look at what actually happened and decide what the next version should be — or whether there should be one.
Fixed-scope, because scope is the whole risk
For context: agencies typically quote MVPs from $30,000 to $150,000. The gap isn't mostly engineering quality — it's overhead, and scope that grows to fill a budget.
Validation build
The smallest thing that can be proven wrong.
- Scoping + assumption mapping
- Core flow, designed and built
- Deployed with analytics wired in
- Yours, in your accounts
Full MVP
Launch-ready: auth, payments, the lot.
- Full-stack build
- Auth, billing & integrations
- Interface design included
- Handover docs + walkthrough
Ongoing build
For after it works and people show up.
- Iteration on real usage data
- A bank of hours each month
- Monitoring & fixes
- Priority response
Market ranges reflect July 2026 rates · Hosting and third-party services billed to your own accounts
Product development, answered
0 → 1 product development takes an idea from nothing to a working product with real users. It covers the parts most people underestimate: deciding what to cut, designing the interface, building the full stack, wiring up payments and auth, deploying it, and getting it in front of people whose reaction actually means something. It's distinct from 1 → n work, which scales something already proven — different problem, different skills.
With me, a focused MVP is fixed from around $5,000 and larger builds run at $50/hour. For market context, agencies typically quote MVPs from $30,000 to $150,000 and offshore shops advertise far less but usually deliver a prototype rather than something you can operate. The real variable is scope discipline — most MVP budgets are spent on features nobody asked for.
A focused MVP is usually four to eight weeks. Anything quoted at six months isn't an MVP, it's a product — and it will be six months before you learn whether anyone wants it. The point of an MVP is to buy information quickly, so if the timeline is long enough that the answer arrives too late to act on, the scope is wrong.
For the right idea and the right person, this is worth a conversation rather than a form. What I can say up front: I've taken four products from blank repo to real users and I run one as a business today, so I know which parts are genuinely hard. What matters more than the stack is whether you've got distribution or a real understanding of the customer — I'd rather build for someone who can sell it.
Usually TypeScript end to end — React or Next.js on the front, Node on the back, Postgres for data, and whatever hosting fits the shape. I use boring, well-understood tools deliberately, because a 0 → 1 product's risk is in whether anyone wants it, not in whether the framework is exciting. If you have an existing stack or team preference, I build in it.
Entirely — code, infrastructure, accounts and keys, in your name from day one. You get documentation and a walkthrough so another engineer can pick it up. I've seen founders discover their 'MVP' lives in an agency's account under an agency's keys; that isn't a product, it's a hostage.
That's common and I take it. Usually it's a build that stalled, an agency that left, or a prototype that got further than expected and now needs to actually work. I'll audit what's there and tell you honestly whether it's worth finishing or worth restarting — sometimes the honest answer is the expensive one.
What's the riskiest assumption in your idea?
Tell me the customer and the problem. I'll tell you the smallest thing we could build to find out whether you're right — and roughly what it'd take.