Plain-language guides to deciding what to build and why it matters. This category covers problem discovery, customer interviews, market sizing, validation experiments, and defining a focused, testable product thesis.
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Project Turnkey started as one thing: an ML-powered lease analyzer. Clear problem, clear value. I could have had it behind a paywall in two weeks. Instead, I kept building — and the reason wasn't what I thought it was.
Most founders who've been burned by a developer think the problem was the code. It usually isn't — or at least not only. By the time I get involved, the conversation tends to start the same way: "I've already been through one developer, things aren't working the way I expected, and I don't really know what I have." My most recent client was the exception. He came in unusually prepared — owned every repo and third-party account, had a working understanding of how his stack tied together, and got everything over to me quickly. That's rare. Most founders can't tell you who owns their database credentials, let alone explain how their API talks to their frontend. Even so, when we moved to launch, we hit a problem that could have stalled development entirely and cost real money to untangle. The audit is why it didn't.