The "what do I need before I build" question is usually procrastination. Founders ask it because they fear the answer might be "go do it." They wonder if they need a designer, a co-founder, a Figma, a spec, a brand, a domain, an LLC, an accelerator. Each is a delay. Each delay reduces the chance the thing ever ships.

The honest answer to "what do I need before I build an MVP" is: one specific assumption you want to test, articulated in a single sentence, and the ability to commit roughly thirty hours over the next two weeks to testing it. Everything else is optional.

Let me defend that with specifics.

You don't need a co-founder to start. Sometimes you do, eventually, but not to ship an MVP. Many solo founders launched fine and added a co-founder later. Many waited a year to find the right co-founder and never started. If you have a great match, ship together. If not, ship alone. Don't let "finding a co-founder" be the gating step.

You don't need a designer. You need a product that demonstrates the value proposition. For most MVPs, that means a landing page, a checkout, and one core flow. Tailwind UI, a Webflow template, or a stock Shopify theme is fine. Design is not what's stopping you from learning whether the business works. Design is the polish step, and the polish step comes after you've proven there's a market.

You don't need a Figma. Figma is useful when you have a team and need visual alignment. For a solo founder building an MVP, Figma is often a place to procrastinate by designing rather than shipping. Skip it unless you have a specific reason — usually "I'm building a high-fidelity demo and the visual quality is the experiment."

You don't need a spec. A 20-page spec implies a level of certainty about what you're building that you don't have. Before you build, you know what you think the product is; after you build and ship, you'll know what it actually needs to be, and they'll be different. Write down the experiment, not the product. The experiment fits in a paragraph.

You don't need an LLC. Form an LLC the day you have revenue or signed customer contracts. Before that, the LLC is a tax burden, a state-filing obligation, and a procrastination instrument that lets you feel like you started a business without starting a business. Almost all of the legal protection an LLC offers can be sorted out the day before your first contract.

You don't need a brand. A name and a domain is enough. Branding follows product-market fit, not the other way around. Many companies spent $5k on a logo before they had a customer, and none of those logos changed the customer's mind.

You don't need an accelerator. Y Combinator and Techstars are useful if you can get in, but the application is also a procrastination instrument. The right time to apply is when you have something to show — usage data, early revenue, a working product. If you're trying to get into an accelerator with a deck, you've inverted the order.

You don't need a perfect-fit market. You need a clear hypothesis about some market and the willingness to be wrong about it. The market you target on day one is probably not the market you'll sell to on day 500. That's fine. Pick something specific and start.

So what do you need?

A single-sentence riskiest-assumption statement. "Doctors will choose our scheduling tool over their existing one if we offer X." "Small business owners will pay $40/month for an AI assistant that handles Y." "Couples planning a wedding will use a shared decision tool if it integrates with Z." Whatever the business is, write it down in one sentence. The sentence should be specific enough that the experiment can produce a yes-or-no answer.

A defined experiment that tests the assumption. If the assumption is "doctors will choose," the experiment is some form of side-by-side comparison or pre-sale ask. If it's "small businesses will pay," the experiment is a real checkout with real cards. If it's "couples will use," the experiment is a real pilot with real couples. Write down the experiment in a paragraph. Write down the success criterion.

A success criterion you'd commit to in writing. "We will consider this validated if 8 out of 20 doctors we demo to say they'd switch." "We will consider this validated if 30 of 1,000 ad-clickers complete checkout." The criterion has to be specific enough that you can tell, afterward, whether you're allowed to declare victory. Founders who skip this step always declare victory regardless of the result.

A budget for the experiment in time and money. Maybe it's two weeks and $500. Maybe it's a month and $5,000. The budget should be small enough that running it doesn't bet the company, and big enough that the experiment can actually run. Write it down. Don't violate it.

A genuine willingness to act on the result. If the experiment fails, will you actually pivot or kill the idea? If the answer is "no, I'll keep going anyway," you're not running an experiment — you're staging theater. Be honest with yourself about whether you're testing or performing.

That's it. That's the list. Nothing on it requires a fundraise, a co-founder, a designer, a brand, an accelerator, an LLC, or a developer.

A few things that do help if you can afford them but aren't required:

Customer-facing conversations beforehand. Twenty interviews with potential customers before you write any code is gold. Steve Blank's Customer Development work — the precursor to Lean Startup — is the canonical text on doing this well. You'll discover that what you thought they wanted is wrong, what they actually want is different, and the pricing they'd accept is not what you assumed. You also discover whether they even exist — which is the single most common founder blind spot. Talk to them.

A landing page you can deploy in an hour. Carrd, Framer, Webflow, plain HTML on Cloudflare Pages — pick one. Have somewhere to point the experiment at. You can iterate the page later.

A way to take money. Stripe Atlas if you need an LLC for it, Stripe Checkout for the actual transaction. Don't write payment code yourself. Use the hosted version.

A way to talk to the customers who try it. Email, an in-product chat (Intercom, Crisp, Plain), or just your personal phone number. The conversations during and after the experiment are the most valuable data you'll get. Founders who hide behind a "info@" address miss the signal.

A small bench of people who will give you honest feedback. Two or three people, not twenty. They should be willing to tell you the product is bad if it's bad. The friend who says "great job!" to everything is not on this list.

The structure of the question "what do I need before I build" tries to make starting feel like a multi-prerequisite process. It isn't. The barrier to running an experiment is almost entirely psychological. You either have a hypothesis specific enough to test or you don't. You either commit to testing it or you don't. The rest is execution, and the execution is the easy part.

Write the sentence. Run the experiment. The first try will be a mess. That's the point.