From prototype to paying customers

The founder had validated the idea with a no-code prototype and a waiting list, but the prototype could not support multiple teams, billing or the integrations early customers were asking for.

• 01 Scoped the first release down to the three workflows customers were already paying attention to
• 02 Built a multi-tenant application with team accounts, roles and Stripe subscriptions
• 03 Set up CI/CD, staging and monitoring from the first sprint so releases were routine

1. Scope

   Cut the feature list by more than half and agreed what 'launch' meant.

2. Foundation

   Tenancy, auth, billing and deployment pipeline in the first two sprints.

3. Product

   Core workflows shipped to a staging environment with a demo every fortnight.

4. Launch

   Private beta, fixes from real usage, then public release.

• Next.js
• Node.js
• PostgreSQL
• Stripe
• Supabase

• Launched to the waiting list on schedule
• Billing, trials and upgrades run without manual work
• A codebase the founder's first in-house engineer could take over cleanly