What an MVP actually costs

Founders write to me after collecting quotes for their first version. The numbers are all over the place, and most of them are answering the wrong question.

The quotes you will collect

The agency quote comes with a project manager, a discovery phase, and a number somewhere between fifty thousand and a lot more, spread over three to six months. The freelancer quote is smaller, but the timeline is soft, and soft timelines grow. The no-code route is fast and cheap until the day your product needs the one thing the platform cannot do.

The price is not the price

The real cost of a first version is the time it takes to find out whether anyone wants it. Every extra month is salary, opportunity, and doubt. A cheap MVP that takes eight months is the most expensive one on the list.

What a first version actually needs

One workflow that works. A way to pay you. A way to see what users do. That is the whole list. Everything else is a guess wearing a feature costume.

How I price it

One fixed price, agreed before anything starts, for a product that ships in 30 days. That is the whole model behind The Launch CTO. If the idea does not fit in 30 days, I say so on the call and we cut until it does.

The expensive MVP is not the one with the biggest invoice. It is the one that keeps you waiting.