How to scope a SaaS MVP that ships in 10 weeks

Every SaaS idea arrives at our discovery call as a 40-feature list. The product that should ship first has about eight. The gap between those two numbers is where budgets and momentum die.

The one-workflow rule

An MVP should let one user type complete one valuable workflow end to end — nothing more. For RecruitAI that was: post a job, parse resumes, get a ranked shortlist. No vendor portal, no offer tracking, no analytics. Those came after real recruiters used the core loop.

What you can never cut

Authentication, billing, and the ability to see what users actually do. Skipping analytics to save a week means flying blind for months. Skipping billing means you never learn if anyone will pay.

Scope this way and 10 weeks is realistic — we've done it repeatedly, and the phased roadmap means nothing on the big list is lost, just sequenced.