I have been building products for a long time now. Some products take time to build if they have many systems and you are building them solo. But then there are some products which are small and you can build quite quickly.
I have developed many products quite fast (mostly in a day) and made them Live. In this article, I will post what practice I follow usually to build some products fast. Note that this might not apply to everyone.
1. Note down what you are going to build
This is the most important part of my development process. I list down whatever I can think of for the product. Then I choose the Top 3 things that I can build quickly. Maybe Top 5 if they are small enough. You need to focus on important features in your product and choose the feature that is essential for your product. You can put “Good to have” features at the bottom of the list.
2. Choose the Technology you are most comfortable with
Don’t think about technology too much. If you want to build the products fast, Choose the technology you are most comfortable with. In my case, I am most comfortable with building Android apps and backend systems. That is what I choose for my product offering. Most of the products that I have developed in a day are Android apps and One is an API offering. At the end of the day, the Product is what matters, No one is going to worry about what technology you use. Remember your goal should be to develop the product quickly.
3. Reuse your code
In my case, I have all my products code already with me and I try to reuse the code as much as possible. Let's say I have to build a signup and login page, Then I just copy and paste the Login functionality from my other app to my current app completely and then change the UI and logic based on my product requirements.
4. Don’t hesitate to copy code from StackOverflow or ChatGPT
Remember that nobody has all the code memorized. When you are building your product, your priority should be to get it to work. You must learn the art of searching for your answer. Try to search for the generic thing directly without worrying about it yourself. For example, If I want to convert a String to Date, I directly go to Google and almost all the time the first link is the answer I am looking for.
5. Try to choose the cheap backend
You are building the first version of your product, You don’t need to spend money to ship your first version of the product. For me, I go with Supabase.com for DB and User Auth most of the time.
Now for deploying your application, You can simply use any platform as a service platform such as Netlify.com or vercel.com They are just giving you most of the things for free. You just need to connect your GitHub repo and all the deployment will start happening automatically.
6. Landing page creation
For building landing pages, I rarely code them myself. I always go with No Code landing page building such as Carrd.co or UnicornPlatform.com You just need to think of content for your landing page, all the themes and designs are already available to use. It was also very cheap.
7. Don't spend time creating Icon and Logo
Remember that you are just building the first version of your product, Don't worry about Creating a Logo by yourself and spending too much time on it. When it comes to creating icons or logos I directly go to Icon.kitchen and create my Icon and Logo in 2 mins.
8. Focus time
Not sure about you but when I want to develop something very quickly. Music is my best friend. I put on my headset, start YouTube music. and jump on coding. When I am in my zone, I don’t use my phone too much. Remember not to open Youtube (instead of Youtube Music) else you will just get distracted instead of code.
9. it's OK to fail
When I am developing something, it always comes to my mind that if it just fails quickly. Remember that this kind of thought will always come when you are working on your product. Remember to not get distracted and focus on launching your MVP as quickly as possible. (The key is to spend as little time as possible for validating new ideas with MVP products)
*I write about Startup and Building and launching products in public. you can follow me on Twitter @manoj_ahi *
If you want to build and launch a product fast. We at UniqueSide.io can do it for you.