How can I be more effective at developing my first MVP?

Hi everyone,

I have been using FreeCodeCamp for awhile now and the community has been awesome, and the content really helpful in learning the basics.

My motivation for learning to code stems from a startup idea that I have and my desire to bring it to fruition. As I have limited financial resources, I thought that learning to do it myself , at least until I can produce an MVP, would be the best way forward for now. I am also designing mock ups for my idea using Excel and Powerpoint in parallel as I learn to code so as to validate my idea as much as I can.

However, I am not sure if this would ultimately be an exercise in futility (hopefully not) and I feel like there are too many moving parts and a steep learning curve learning curve. It has also been a challenging journey trying to do this with a full-time job that demands 50-60 hours a week.

My question is should I persist with learning and developing the code myself or should I try to pursue other strategies get my first MVP out? Thanks and I look forward to all constructive responses :slight_smile:

What strategies do you have in mind?

What does MVP mean?

Getting to a Minimal Viable Product is actually a huge effort that often takes years even with experts on your team. This isn’t meant to discourage you, just to make sure what we’re talking aobut. A MVP is ready to actually be released. It provides the minimum required functionality, is stable, reliable, secure, and usable. If you’re looking to start a business and want to try to pitch your product to potential investors, you might focus instead on a working demo: software that looks like something that is beyond the scope of an MVP, but doesn’t actually implement the difficult functionality.

@shimphillip An MVP refers to a minimum viable product, and I think what I am trying to achieve is really a working demo instead as mentioned by @ArielLeslie.

Right now I am actively trying to learn as much about React and Redux through other people’s codes on Github/ Youtube. I am also trying to recreate my mock ups but it seems like there’s so much I don’t know.

Ultimately I guess I may have to just plough through as many different projects available on Github and try to assimilate parts that I think would be useful for what I’m trying to achieve. However if there’s a more robust way of doing so, I am keen to try it.