Ship it
Make the smallest real thing
Gate cleared when
Put something live that a stranger can use without you standing next to them.
The read
About ten minutes. Written for the founder, not the parent.
Shipped does not mean finished. Shipped means three things exist: a way for someone to see it, a way for them to ask for it, and a clear promise about what happens next. That is the whole bar. You can clear it in an afternoon.
Pick the smallest rung on this ladder that solves the problem you named:
A single page that explains the thing and has a form. A form on its own, with no page at all. A service you perform entirely by hand, where the “product” is you doing the work and a message confirming it. A physical setup — a table, a sign, a price list.
The trick nobody tells beginners: you are allowed to fake the machine. If your idea is an app that matches dog walkers to neighbours, you do not build the matching engine. You put up a page, take the requests, and match them yourself by text message on Saturday morning. Users get the real outcome; you skip six months of building. Do the work by hand until the hand-work hurts, and only then automate.
This is also where AI earns its place. Describe what you want in plain words — who it is for, what the one sentence at the top should say, what the button should do — and ask for a single page. Then read it as a stranger would and change one thing at a time. You are not asking it to be clever. You are asking it to be fast, so that the thing exists today instead of next month.
The only test that counts: send the link to one of your ten, say nothing else, and ask them “what do you think this does?” If they get it wrong, your page is wrong. Fix the first sentence, not the colours.
Your mission
Now go and do this.
Ninety minutes on a timer. Get something live — a URL, a form, or a real physical setup. Then run the stranger test on one person from module two and write down exactly what they said it does.
The trap
Starting version two before a single stranger has touched version one. Polishing is the most comfortable way to avoid finding out whether anyone wants it.
Definition of done
All four, honestly.
- It is live, and you can send someone a link or an address
- The first sentence says who it is for and what it does, with no cleverness
- There is one obvious way to ask for it or order it
- A person who has not heard you explain it described it correctly
Nobody is checking these but you. That is the point — this is the first thing you will ever run where the standards are yours to keep.
Saved in this browser. Tick it when the four lines above are genuinely true.