01 · Section
The "throwaway MVP" myth
Founders are told MVPs should be throwaway. In practice, almost none are — once it has paying users, the rewrite never gets greenlit. The codebase you ship in week 8 is the codebase you will be shipping features against in year 2.
Plan for that reality. Cut scope ruthlessly, but do not cut quality on the few things you ship.
02 · Section
What to cut, what to keep
Cut: admin panels (use a database client), analytics dashboards (use the warehouse), notifications systems (use a third party), permissions complexity (start with two roles), microservices (start as a monolith), feature flags for nothing (do not build infra before you need it).
Keep: typed code, tests on critical paths (billing, auth, the core flow), CI/CD on day one, error tracking, structured logging. These compound and are nearly free to add at the start, prohibitive to add later.
03 · Section
Architecture choices that age well
A boring monolith with a clean module boundary is the safest bet. Next.js or Laravel, Postgres, a hosted queue, deployed on a single PaaS. You can extract services later if the team and load justify it; you almost never need to extract them in year one.
The architectures that age badly: too many services, too much custom infrastructure, too much abstraction "for future flexibility" before the product has direction.
Key takeaways
- Assume the MVP will become production — and scope accordingly.
- Cut features and infrastructure aggressively; keep tests, types, CI and observability.
- A boring monolith on a managed PaaS outlasts most "scalable" architectures.
- Defer microservices and feature flags until the product demands them.
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Written by
Aamir Khan
6 min read · Posted in Web Development