What’s the hidden cost of rebuilding your MVP?
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I’ve noticed something interesting while talking to early-stage founders: almost everyone underestimates the true cost of rebuilding.
On paper, an MVP is “cheap and fast.” But when growth comes, and the codebase can’t keep up, rebuilding often costs 3-4x more, not just in money, but in lost time, missed opportunities, and investor confidence.
I’ve seen founders spend 6-9 months untangling bad architecture when they should have been scaling.
Curious to hear from this community:
Did you ever have to rebuild your MVP from scratch?
If so, what did it cost you in time, money, and momentum?
For context, I run DevVoid.org where I partner with founders on scalable builds. Always open to chat if this resonates.
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Replies
Agree 100%, great discussion topic. Thanks for sharing!
The MVP struggle is real for sure. If the architecture isn’t thought out carefully, scaling becomes very painful and expensive. In my experience, the best way to build an MVP is with scalability in mind from the start.
I find most founders over-engineer the MVP without really giving much thought to the long game. They are just anxious to get the "perfect" product into the market and often times it is not architected correctly and requires a lot of remediation at some point.
I would focus on a modular approach with clean code that can grow with the product. I would also recommend using well-supported frameworks and platforms to avoid reinventing the wheel.
Prioritize core features first and build a roadmap and design the data model and APIs so they can extend without major rewrites. Consider automated testing and CI/CD pipelines early to reduce technical debt.
Essentially, the goal is an MVP that’s lean but delivers enough value to be validated as a viable solution the market wants, so when growth hits, the foundation is ready.
Can't say I've ever had to remediate to an extent that took away from the next iteration, but in my 30 years of tech consulting I've sure had clients that did.