The leap from idea to minimum viable product (MVP) is never straightforward. When my co-founders and I started HappyPath, we knew we were jumping headfirst into uncharted waters. Prior to HappyPath, none of us had raised a penny of funding, hired teammates without a pre-defined job spec or built a viable business from scratch. Yet there we were, sitting at our dinner table, laptops open, furiously typing in a shared doc, trying to articulate every detail of a product and business we’d only dreamt of.
Although each of us had built or contributed to various products in the past, we didn’t have a playbook for going from zero to one. But we had curiosity, a great support system of mentors, and we believed our skills and collective work ethic could build something meaningful.
Throughout the past year, as our team grew from three to nine and our product iterated hundreds of times, we learned that building from scratch isn’t about being right the first time — it’s about failing fast, learning faster, and focusing on the essentials while adapting to a constantly changing landscape. These lessons have shaped our approach, offering insights that may resonate with anyone embarking on the journey of building something from the ground up.
The Importance of the Role-Player
From a young age, I thrived in team environments such as sports, music and schoolwork, driven by a desire to stand out and improve my own abilities. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the value of being a role-player, someone who elevates the collective effort instead of seeking individual recognition.
As I transitioned into my professional career as an engineer and later as a product manager, this individualistic mindset gave way to the pursuit of becoming a “glue guy.” I aspired to be the person who understood the boundaries of my skills and was cognizant of each teammate’s strengths, meticulously learning, blending and arranging to help teams achieve their goals. My managers encouraged this growth, giving me opportunities to lead small teams on projects building tools to facilitate better communication for application support teams.
Eventually, they trusted me to scale teams solving complex problems related to launching a fixed income business while working at a prime broker. These were invaluable learning experiences carried out within structured environments supported by experts who guided and corrected me when needed.
This type of exposure helped develop fundamental skills that would become instrumental when we started building HappyPath. Now, we work in a different environment; it’s one without guardrails or established systems to rely on. As co-founders, our years of experience culminated in the ability to build nearly anything from scratch while also recognizing buy-versus-build opportunities. In our journey, we’ve learned that moving from zero to one is not just about building a product. It’s about building a team and a process that can thrive in ambiguity.
Going From Dream to MVP
Whether you’re raising your first round of funding, launching a startup from your kitchen table, or helping a team innovate within an established organization, the leap from idea to MVP is daunting. Questions pile up quickly:
- What features should we build, and how do we measure success?
- When will we be ready to release a beta to real users?
- Whom should we hire, and what skills should they bring?
- How many people do we actually need?
At HappyPath, our North Star was clear from day one: build an agentic software testing platform where tests can be automated using natural language and web-agents to complete business objectives. We found that our clarity of vision didn’t make the journey much easier. Along the way, we learned to embrace uncertainty, adapt to constraints and make decisions with imperfect information. These lessons are what I hope to share with you.
How to Define an MVP
Building an MVP is like packing for a business trip with an evolving itinerary. When we started HappyPath, we meticulously wrote out every feature we could imagine, completing detailed product requirements documents (PRDs) and designs that captured user personas, permissions, and business processes. We were preparing for every possible scenario, like packing a suitcase to the brim with items for any occasion.
Budget, timelines and team resources became our first set of filters, naturally narrowing our scope. We evaluated every feature under one guiding principle: Does this directly help our users accomplish their most essential tasks? If it didn’t, it was an unnecessary item taken out of the suitcase. This focus freed up space for what truly mattered.
The process of constant prioritization felt ruthless but proved invaluable, with each reduction in scope clarifying and solidifying our MVP vision and product roadmap. As a byproduct of the rigorous feature scrutiny and detailed PRDs, we created a prioritized list of items that included new features or quality-of-life improvements to existing ones, laying the foundation for future growth.
In the end, our suitcase wasn’t packed with everything we wanted, but it held exactly what we needed to make the trip a success.
So, How Do You Build Your Team?
Your team is your most important asset in the MVP journey. In the early days of HappyPath, we debated endlessly about hiring: Should we run lean or scale fast? Should we prioritize experience or potential?
Here’s what we learned, captured in the archetypes that define our team:
6 Hiring Archetypes in Software Engineering
- The Savant.
- The Corporate Beast.
- The Rover.
- The Conductor(s).
- The Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife.
- The Junior Powerhouse(s).
The Savant
A visionary, often a founder deeply tied to the underlying technology that drives the core product offering for the customer-facing platform. At OpenAI, this would be the R&D Teams behind ChatGPT; at HappyPath, it’s our Engine Team. The Savant is someone who goes rogue, deviating from the plan, to deliver tangible improvements unrelated to the current sprint. This individual has experience delivering technology as a one-person team, or while working in larger organizations. The Savant is a crucial decision-maker who works with the Corporate Beast to guide implementation details for the Junior Powerhouse(s).
Their role on the MVP team is to push innovation through thought leadership and experimentation. This is a role that typically cannot be hired, the Savant is a technical founder and visionary leader with a track record of delivering.
The Corporate Beast
A veteran engineer and brilliant mind in modern engineering stacks, ripe with experience working in firms ranging from mid-size to enterprise. This person makes calculated decisions, provides informed feedback, and ensures that you can achieve your goals at scale. The Corporate Beast emerges as a leader — hungry to continue learning and growing but never compromising their delivery-oriented mindset. They collaborate with all archetypes across the team, acting as both a leader and mentor, meticulously reviewing implementation details while creating processes to keep development efficient and effective. When hiring the Corporate Beast look for an inquisitive individual who is not shy about asking questions or challenging ideas proposed by the Savant. They will be instrumental in supporting the Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife and Junior Powerhouse(s) as they grow their skills and develop the product.
The Rover
A technical product or project manager who creates structure and quality controls around the building process while finding ways to contribute to product development. A team’s Rover is someone who was formerly an engineer or is eager to learn technical skills. They are deeply focused on balancing end-user value and time-to-delivery, acting as a buffer between engineering teams and the business. In this role, the Rover takes ownership of shortcomings and delivery misses, ensuring accountability while maintaining forward momentum.
The Rover’s skills empower all team members to actively contribute to the product. They clarify timelines and priories while serving as the first line of defense for quality assurance. By maintaining focus and structure, they help bring the Savant back into scheduled sprints and bridge gaps in business requirements and technical implementation for the Corporate Beast, Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife and the Junior Powerhouse(s). Hiring a Rover can be challenging, as they often come from diverse backgrounds. Look for a team player who values timelines and prioritization and is willing to tackle blockers head-on. The ideal Rover combines project, product, and program management skills with the engineering acumen of a Junior Powerhouse.
The Conductor(s)
Well-rounded operators with deep knowledge of the product’s end users. These individuals quickly identify missteps and steer the product towards the best outcome. They often enhance the development process by handling tasks such as manual data cleaning, writing and revising tests, and providing critical product feedback. The Conductors collaborate effectively with all other team members, especially the Rover.
Conductors may come from a variety of backgrounds, including consulting or product management. When hiring the Conductor, look for someone who is process-oriented, open-minded and demonstrates quick problem-solving abilities. Experience in the target industry of your product is an added advantage, as it provides valuable insights and ensures they can adapt quickly to the team’s goals.
The Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife
A full-stack engineer and leader with years of diverse experience who is willing to take direction from the Conductors, Corporate Beast and Rover. This individual takes pride in continually improving their technical skillset and brings versatility to the team. When it comes to developing the MVP, they leverage their skills to deliver exactly what the team envisions. The Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife is a part-owner in the product roadmap, fostering meaningful discussions around design, implementation, and prioritization.
The background for this archetype can be industry-specific or general. It is critical that they have worked across various functional roles in multiple projects. Leadership experience, regardless of team size, is highly valuable. They should collaborate effectively with the Corporate Beast, Junior Powerhouse(s) and Conductor(s), ensuring smooth communication and alignment across the team.
The Junior Powerhouse(s)
A small, energetic pack of engineers with an immense passion for coding. They are obsessed with the details and are committed to building products by-the-book. They must be able to receive feedback from the Savant, Corporate Beast and Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife to strike a balance between planned rigidity and scrappy execution.
During the MVP build their work is prioritized at the discretion of the Rover and Conductor(s), while their technical output is reviewed by the Seasoned Swiss-Army Knife and Corporate Beast. The most important factor when hiring the Junior Powerhouse(s) is their ability to accept and act on tangible, productive feedback. With the right mentorship, they will grow into leaders who are critical to any organization’s long-term success.
At HappyPath, our team members are dynamic and often wear multiple hats. When hiring, we considered candidates’ communication skills, willingness to collaborate and ability to learn from those around them. We found that these traits often outweighed innate technical acumen, especially in roles such as the Junior Powerhouses and Rover.
We were also deliberate about avoiding over-hiring. Too many engineers working across the same surface area of code can lead to inefficiencies and toe-stepping. Instead, our hiring cadence emerged from necessity, adding team members only when we began to stretch too thin. This approach ensured that the MVP’s foundation was solid and ready to support additional developer firepower when needed.
Bask in the Process
As you begin your journey, remember that an MVP is not simply a deliverable. Your MVP reflects the team’s ability to focus, adapt and collaborate under pressure. With the right mix of complementary skills and a well-defined North Star, your small team can turn limited resources into meaningful user impact.
Every step of the zero-to-one journey is a microcosm of building something bigger than yourself. The deliberate process of packing your suitcase, hiring thoughtfully, and embracing the ambiguity of your first iteration mirrors the challenges you’ll face as your product scales and evolves. The MVP phase teaches you resilience, adaptability, and the value of collaboration — skills that will define not just your product, but your organization’s DNA. The true magic lies in the process: learning to trust your instincts, relying on your team, and building a foundation that can carry you far beyond the first version. In this way, your MVP becomes a promise — to your team, your users, and yourself — that you’re in it for the long haul.
When executed properly, good decision-making, paired with a little bit of luck and a relentless effort to understand your users, builds the foundation for long-term growth. Be present with your team, users, and product vision throughout this process; your MVP is proof that small teams, with big ideas, can achieve extraordinary outcomes.
Good luck building!
