A 30-Day MVP Checklist (That Survived Real Founders)

What this is

A cut list, not a feature buffet. We run 30-day sprints for founders; this is the schedule that survives contact with reality when someone asks for "Uber + Notion + AI" in one month.

Week 0 — Scope or suffer

In	Out (for now)
One user loop	Second persona
Email auth or OAuth pick one	Social + magic + password same week
Postgres	Microservices
Vercel deploy	Multi-region

Week 1 — Skeleton

Next.js App Router + Tailwind + component kit you already know
DB schema: minimum tables for the loop
Preview deploy day 3 — forces env discipline early
loading.tsx / error boundary on the loop route only

Stack default:

Layer	Pick
Framework	Next.js 15+
DB	Postgres + Drizzle or Prisma
Auth	Clerk or magic link — not both
Email	Resend
Host	Vercel

Week 2 — Core loop

Server Actions or Route Handlers — avoid extra API layer unless mobile client needs it
Payments only if money is week-1 critical (Stripe/Razorpay)
Admin? A single protected /admin route, not a second app

Week 3 — Ops & trust

Error boundaries on user-facing routes
Basic analytics (Vercel + one product event)
SEO: metadata, sitemap, OG for marketing page
Staging vs prod env documented

Week 4 — Launch

Lighthouse on marketing + app shell (not obsession, sanity)
Runbook: env vars, rollback, who gets paged
Handoff: README, demo script, known limitations list

Kill list (say no out loud)

Real-time everything
Custom design system before users
Mobile app and web unless budget doubles
"We'll add tests later" on payment code

TL;DR

MVPs die from scope creep, not missing dark mode. One loop, one deploy, one honest demo.