Show HN: ShittyMVP.com – Quick and Dirty MVP with a Money Back Guarantee | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: ShittyMVP.com – Quick and Dirty MVP with a Money Back Guarantee

shittymvp.com

20 pointsoDot16 comments

I tried doing something similar a year ago but had a lot of trouble finding the right type of customer who needed an MVP. Being able to start fresh and move quickly on a new idea sounds like the perfect kind of work :) Just curious how many projects you've done so far with this model?

PS. love the simplicity of your site. it shows me you know the true meaning of MVP!

Yeah, getting client is tough. Especially when the targets here don't have anything out yet.

ShittyMVP was just launched so nothing yet with exactly that model, however there are a lot of lessons here from my previous work with clients.

Thank you for the compliment :)

I founded this after bumping over and over again into (usually non-tech) people just wanting to get something out, now. It's a lot harder for non-technical people to test the waters, and it often includes a lot of grinding work just to get a freelance team up and running.

The thing here is that I work with the clients on their MVP scope so it can fit our offering ($5000 & 30 days), a thing that usually makes the MVP better, more focused.

Since I operate so fast some things can't be promised (like code quality or a spec document), but that's what the money back guarantee is for.

Hopefully this will help more talented people release and test stuff instead of sitting in a room writing specs.

that money back guarantee is going to hurt :(

Every client and manager I've ever worked for wanted their thing done as fast as possible. No business person I've met actually understands technical debt, let alone factors it into decision making.

I work with my clients to manage these trade-offs, and most of them opt for low cost, high speed, low code quality. I still don't charge a flat fee or offer money back.

As I mentioned in another comment, the price is indeed fixed, but the work is not -- if client's initial request is too much work for ShittyMVP's offering I will advise to remove features. If all of them are crucial to the MVP, and they rarely are, I'll recommend trying other freelance options (such as yourself).

I'd like to start a similar site, but where people start a project (MVP) and we add dev steps that they can fund one step at a time (i.e. in $250-500 chunks). initial consult fee is $200 to lay out the general budget and tasks to get to 100%.

can you explain your process after payment ? Like design, how do you collect requirements that are in scope ? etc.

What language or frameworks do you use ?

Do you at least try to write good code ?

Design is very simple -- creative work is usually the most time consuming and so what I do is have an aesthetically pleasing yet very simple design.

This depends on the project, but mostly (in no particular order): Node, Python, Angular, Vue, NativeScript, Ionic.

Yes, I most definitely try to write good code -- that statement is an underpromise because code good is simply not the focus.

Nice! Do I get my money back if the MVP isn't shitty?

You get your money back for any reason! I can understand why you'd be angry if we break the shitty promise.

Interesting idea! How do you protect yourself against people always requesting for a refund? It seems this could be abused, no?

That's right -- I ask for money upfront to know they're serious. I then deploy the final product to a dev env and don't deliver until they say they want to keep it

But what happens when you deploy it to production, they grab the code, and 29 days later they request a refund? Do you void the 30-day guarantee when they sign off for a production deployment? Or is that 30 days included in the 30-day development period? (Sneaky, sneaky…)

There isn't a 30-day money back guarantee, just a money back guarantee. It is indeed voided on production deployment

Oops--I guess I misread. Cool idea, regardless. Good luck!

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