"4 to 6 weeks" is a popular agency promise. It's also usually a lie.
Most real MVPs — ones with auth, a database, a paid plan, an actual user journey — take 8 to 12 weeks from handshake to launch. Ten is a fair middle.
Here's what those ten weeks actually look like.
Week 0 — Idea Jam (½ day)
Not billable. Not a sales call. A working session where we:
- Map the user and the one job they're hiring the product to do.
- Cut half the features on the whiteboard.
- Leave with a one-pager of the MVP scope.
Output: Written scope, rough timeline, fixed-price quote.
Week 1 — Design Sprint, Part One
- User flows (3–5 screens max).
- Low-fidelity wireframes.
- Agreement on the one user journey we're building.
Founder's job this week: Show it to three target users. Listen more than you talk.
Week 2 — Design Sprint, Part Two
- High-fidelity mockups in Figma.
- Clickable prototype you can show investors.
- Component library starter so the dev build doesn't redesign as it goes.
Milestone: You have something that looks like a product.
Week 3 — Foundation Sprint
- Repo set up (you own it).
- Auth, database schema, deploy pipeline.
- CI/CD from day one — not bolted on at launch.
Milestone: You can log into your own app. It does nothing yet. But it's real.
Week 4 — Core Flow Sprint
The one user journey we agreed on. End-to-end. Ugly but working.
Milestone: A user can sign up, do the main thing, and see the result.
Week 5 — Feature Build Sprint
Secondary flows. Admin panel. The second-most-important thing.
Milestone: The product starts to feel like a product, not a demo.
Week 6 — AI / Integrations Sprint (if in scope)
- LLM integration (summarisation, classification, whatever the product needs).
- Third-parties: payments, email, analytics, whatever.
- Rate limits, error handling, fallback UX.
Founder's job this week: Start thinking about launch messaging.
Week 7 — Polish Sprint
The sprint that separates "technically works" from "I'd pay for this."
- Loading states. Empty states. Error states.
- Copy rewrite throughout the app.
- Mobile responsiveness (if web).
- Performance pass (real one, not just Lighthouse).
Milestone: You'd show it to a stranger without caveats.
Week 8 — Beta Sprint
- 10–20 real users in the app.
- Daily bug triage.
- Analytics dashboards so you can see what users actually do.
Founder's job this week: Watch user sessions. Don't fix what isn't broken; fix what's actually broken.
Week 9 — Launch Prep Sprint
- Landing page / marketing site.
- Payment flow, if applicable.
- Terms, privacy, legal basics.
- Monitoring and alerts set up.
Milestone: You could flip the switch today and not panic.
Week 10 — Launch
- Public launch.
- Support and hotfix window.
- Analytics review at end of week.
Output: A live product. Real users. Real data. Real decisions ahead.
What makes or breaks the timeline
In order of how often they blow timelines:
- Scope creep. Founder adds "just one more thing" in week 5. The timeline now ends in week 14.
- Late feedback. Designs sit in the founder's inbox for a week. The build waits.
- Integration surprises. That third-party API turned out to have a three-day approval process nobody checked.
- Unvalidated assumptions. User research skipped in week 1 shows up as a rebuild in week 8.
The teams that ship in 10 weeks aren't faster. They're more disciplined about scope.
Want us to map a 10-week plan for your idea?
Book an Idea Jam →