If funding is scarce, how should I get my MVP built?

T

trishjrvrjg

New member
I am building a cloud gaming startup. However, I am already employed in an IT job in India. So I don't get much time to work on my startup. I have created a mockup of my landing page. My next plan of action is to create an MVP which customers will pay for. How should I go about creating an MVP? These are my options. Which one should I go for?


Option
Time Cost
Money Cost
Comments

Outsource
3-6 months max
$10k-$15k minimum
My entire net worth is
 
@trishjrvrjg Learn to code fast, you have youtube and an army of AI copilots at your disposal. Forget about the landing page my guy you have nothing to send them to. Build an MVP in a few weeks not "3-4 years". You learn coding by building, not by studying for 3-4 years and then boom creating something. If that's your plan forget about it.
 
@trishjrvrjg When I think cloud gaming I think:

1- Extremely high startup costs

2- Competing with monopolistic companies (Microsoft has half of all games in their cloud gaming setup while sony has the other half in theirs)

3- google tried it and failed.

Did I miss something?
 
@mom3222 Cloud gaming faces laws of physics problems. Pings down in the single digits which is needed for any viable cloud gaming means the people playing need to be very close to the server. If you take even 50ms ping, then multiply that by 2 (one send signal, a process, and a receive signal) you’re already going to notice a lag. At 100ms, forget about it (that’s 2/10 of a second for EVERY input). And this is assuming instant processing and no other network lag.

I honestly don’t think centralized cloud gaming is likely to be the future anytime soon. It really doesn’t serve a meaningful purpose until games are so graphically intense that central processing is needed. HOWEVER in theory such a processing intensive game that it needs centralized service would be prohibitive in price, it would be the equivalent of renting a high power graphical/processing server space for X avg hours a month, let’s say 20 at $10 an hour (and that’s on the cheap end) - that’s $200/month to game and we’re ONLY talking hardware costs.

I can see centralized AI generated maps/content that players “share” real time (like an MMORPG that evolves real-time), but that isn’t distributed cloud gaming.
 
@trishjrvrjg None. Use YC to find a technical co-founder.

The fact that you think you could build a cloud gaming startup using a no-code app or be a full stack engineer in 3-4 years means you have no idea what you're doing. And so if you were to outsource it you would more than likely get ripped off and waste your money.

And I assume before you've done all of this you have done extensive market research e.g. talked to 100s of customers.
 
@wantsgirl This but also, you can prove traction without an MVP. Your product isn’t tech critical, meaning it doesn’t ride or die on whether or not it’s technologically possible. It’s been done before.

Your job is to prove the niche exists and the market is hungry for whatever your take on this is — a simple signup or waiting list is enough. Since you already have a mock-up done, bring it in front of your target customers and prove that they want it.

A waiting list with 1000 people in like a couple weeks time, is more than enough for validation. From here you can take this to potential ecosystem partners, get them excited about what your building, sign letters of intent, and bring that in front of VCs. You’ll get funded 9/10 times.
 
@onetezza I feel like a lot of founders know this intuitively but it’s so much more comfortable living in “development” or “stealth” land, cuz the market will take your idea and chew it out. Validation is also room for the opposite to happen — ego shattering stuff…
 
@trishjrvrjg Use a boilerplate to kickstart faster. But, write down docs - page by page and explain without any fluff what should be on those pages. Then, hire a designer to draw the prototype in Figma based on the docs, plan the design with a pre build components, i.e. shadcn (check shadcn components). Next, try to code a front-end and if you'd get stuck with the backend, hire a person who knows the techstack in the boilerplate of your choice. This will save you a lot of cash. Designer cost should be around 1k and for the backend you will pay by hour probably, I'd say shop around, could be 2-3k for both specialists work and 3-4 month for the front end by yourself.
 
@trishjrvrjg Ironically, I listened to a YouTube video today that was recommended to me about how one of the YC partners doesn’t ever tell someone their idea is bad. Paul Graham suggested to him that it’s not an investor’s job to poke holes in an idea, but rather to find out how it could be successful and help the founder get to that point. Some people in these comments could learn a lesson from that.

As a few of the good comments have suggested, it’s important to validate the idea with potential customers. You might even get some very useful feedback.

Also, on the no code front… I don’t know how to code. I’ve spent probably 4-6 months learning a few different no code tools. I think in that timeframe I’ve spent a grand total of $40, which was a month’s subscription to two different platforms. You certainly don’t need to budget $1,000 to learn that. I’m not sure if your idea can be accomplished in a no code MVP, but if so it’s definitely a valuable skill to have.

Lastly, as someone else said, try to find a technical co-founder. You could do that through YC co-founder matching, mutual friends, or any other method. If you can get the buy-in of a technical co-founder that also helps validate your idea.
 
@trishjrvrjg Or start the most basic way. Create a Yep.so landing page with your value prop and blast it out to everyone you know and see how large a waitlist you can assemble. That’s proving validation for the idea.
 
@trishjrvrjg You dont need 3-4 years to program! Only took me 1 month to code. Learning while building my MVP. Think that you are only building an MVP, so you only need to know what you need for the "MVP".
 
@trishjrvrjg I paid about 4K to have an idea built out, and even though I have a ton of code now from the project, I ended it short because I just don’t have the finances to continue funding it. Now I’m actually learning how to build, fully throwing myself into the fire and just picking up on GitHub projects and taking coursera classes on Python. Nothing beats doing it yourself, unless you have money to just pay someone to do it for you and it’s in the 10s of thousands for a platform like this.
 
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