SaaS MVP: What to Build First (and What to Leave Out)

Every founder's feature list is longer than their runway. The art of a good SaaS MVP is separating what proves your value from what merely looks complete.

Build: the core value loop

Identify the one loop that delivers value — a user signs up, does the key thing, gets a result and comes back. Everything in the MVP should serve that loop. If a feature doesn't make the loop faster, clearer or more valuable, it can wait.

Build: the foundations that are expensive to change

• Tenancy model — how customer data is separated. Retrofitting multi-tenancy is painful.
• Authentication and roles — teams, invitations and permissions.
• Billing hooks — even if you start with one plan, design for plans, trials and seats.
• Data model — think carefully about the core entities and their relationships.
• Observability — logging, error tracking and backups from the first deploy.

Leave out (for now)

• Extensive settings and customisation — use sensible defaults first.
• Complex reporting — export to CSV until you know what customers really need.
• Native mobile apps — a responsive web app is often enough to validate.
• Integrations nobody has asked for yet — build the two your first customers need.

Ship, measure, iterate

Launch to a small group of design partners, watch how they use the product and talk to them weekly. The roadmap after launch should come from evidence, not the original wish list.