Completing the MVP - Build Log #4

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Completing the MVP of the product

I've completed all of the core functionality for the product, and will be spending the next week doing three key things:

Refining and polishing the design

I've built the entire product using standard TailwindCSS components - they do the job, but I'd like to spend more time on the visual identity of the product, so all of the elements feel unified. I'm certainly not a designer, but I want to make sure the product is looking as polished before launch as possible, before we ultimately tighten the design when there is the demand to justify it.

Testing the product, and writing automated checks to ensure stability of future deployments

I plan to continue iterating rapidly, and as a single person working on a product, I want to have very solid visibility on whether a deployment has potentially broken something within the product.

With this product in particular, it's vital that it remains incredibly reliable, so this is something I want to have focused on from the very beginning.

Building new features

I've built the functionality that absolutely had to be included in v1, but I know there are a few things that would benefit early customers that I want to add this week. Typically I would advise against this, but I'm in close communication with early customers and feel that I have a strong enough understanding of needs and requirements to make a judgement call, relative to the amount of time it will take me to add them.

This past week in particular, I've been amazed at how much GitHub Copilot has improved my speed of writing code - at times, it has written entire React components from scratch, based on the name of the file and a one line comment that I've written. While the code itself is easy enough to do without AI, just the time saved from typing out fairly uncomplicated code like this gives significantly more time to working on the things that matter.

Naming my current product - an update

Last week, I wrote that I was in the process of naming the product that I'm currently working on. I have now got a name, secured the domain name, and begun the process for protecting its usage - I'll share the name when that process has completed.

The domain name cost around $1.7k, which is more than I would like to have paid for a domain name at such an early stage, but still significantly less than many other examples I've heard in the past few months. The domain name is a .com domain name - I've always been sceptical as to whether having a .com domain (as opposed to using another top-level domain) made any difference in terms of traffic, but after seeing this data from Pieter Levels, I'm inclined to think that it does; either based on Google's search algorithm, consumer perception, or both.

Full Casting Announced for Doctor Zhivago

The full casting has been announced for Doctor Zhivago, a concert that will be taking place next year at the London Palladium, produced by Lambert Jackson, along with my new production company, Positive Sum Productions.

Here's a video of Ramin Karimloo singing a song from the show, called "Who is She?"

I wrote more about my ambitions for the production company in a thread on Twitter earlier in the week:

Interesting articles that I've read in the past week