"What does the process look like from idea to live product?"

There are a lot of checkpoints between "I have an idea" and "people are actually using this."

Step 1: Understanding

The first thing we're going to do is sit down and talk about your idea. I need to understand:

• What you want to accomplish
• Who your users are
• What market you're aiming for
• What "success" looks like in your head

That's how I decide which product decisions and technical decisions make sense, and how to balance the two.

The Process

From there, it's pretty simple:

1. Understand your idea
2. Distill it down to its core
3. Figure out what's truly important
4. Decide what are the must-haves for a first version, and what can wait
5. Build the first version that can deliver actual value

The Real Goal

"Live product" by itself is not the goal. Any product can be live at any point if all you care about is pushing code.

What you really want is to find an audience that cares. That's what people call product–market fit, and there is no formula for it. There's a lot of thinking, building, experimenting, and trial and error.

So the process is: understand the idea, build a product around it, put it in front of people, and learn. Then we repeat.