The Realm of Low Expectations
February 20, 2026
As a startup investor, I've seen many careers develop over the last 20 years and one of the worst patterns I see is: low expectations.
Today, we’re talking about minimizing the work for your first version.
1. First, start with a basic workflow based on screenshots. You will have to iterate on those many times to get good feedback, but then you can build out an interactive prototype. Most founders use tools like Figma during this time.
2. Next, we move up to a simple experiment using real data. Try to keep the test small and narrowly focused on one problem to be solved. A lot of teams use no-code tools like Bubble, Retool, and Zapier to avoid having to deploy working code in this phase.
3. Lastly, stay focused on the most engaged customers rather than any broader distribution. You’ll need these early customers to be naturally very excited in order to tolerate all the bugs and delays they will experience.
Best of luck out there.
