Mistake 1: Building before talking
Writing code before talking to 20 potential users is the most expensive shortcut in tech. Talk first. Build second. You'll cut the wrong features and find the one that matters.
Mistake 2: Confusing 'MVP' with 'cheap'
An MVP is the smallest version that solves a real problem well. Cheap, broken software still has to be supported, and bad first impressions cost more than a tighter build would have.
Mistake 3: Hiring offshore on hourly
Hourly contracts incentivise slow work. Fixed-scope, fixed-price contracts with a small senior team beat 50-hour weeks from a junior agency every time. Pay for outcomes, not seats.
Mistake 4: No analytics from day one
You can't fix what you can't see. Two hours of analytics setup at launch saves months of guessing about churn later. Plausible plus event tracking — that's the whole stack.
Mistake 5: Building for round two
Building 'so it can scale to a million users' when you have zero. Premature scale is the cousin of premature optimisation. Get to 100 users first. Architecture is a problem for when you have one.