I built PactoMVP because I was done being a professional brainstormer — endlessly chasing the dopamine hit of a shiny new idea while my half-started projects collected dust.
It's a six step framework that takes you from scattered ideas to a defined, committed MVP — today, not someday.
This framework is designed to be run with a capable LLM -- I would suggest Gemini or Claude. Ideally you open it now and work through each stage live. The goal is to get through the whole method in one sitting: step by step, you'll mine your own life to dig up real problems, zero in on the one you're best positioned to solve, and walk away with your MVP locked in. At each stage you'll find a ready-to-use prompt you can paste into your LLM. No setup required -- just a few hours of your time, no excuses. Let's go!
Prime Your Thinking Partner
›Your Background Is Your Unfair Advantage
›Stop Inventing. Start Digging.
›Kill Your Darlings
›Three's Already a Crowd.
›If It Has the Word "Platform" in It, Start Over.
›Finally. A Deadline You Can't Ghost.
You have an MVP — and that already puts you ahead of most people who start this. Now there's one question left: are you going to ship it, or go back to being a perpetual ideator?
The single most reliable way to ship is to hold yourself accountable — pick a real human — your witness — someone whose only job is to confirm on your deadline day whether you actually shipped, set a hard launch deadline, and mean it. Most people do exactly this and still slip, because missing a self-imposed deadline costs them nothing. So we're going to spice it up a little and ramp up the cost of inaction. Here's how it works:
Do you have to put money on the line? Of course not — the deadline and your witness alone will hold you more accountable than any sticky note.
Will it help? Yes — nothing focuses the mind quite like knowing your card gets charged if you don't ship. And if things do go sideways, your stake goes to PactoMVP — keeping the site running, the emails firing, and the next brainstorm-addict nudged toward actually building something. A bad outcome for you, a small win for the ecosystem.
These founders stopped planning and shipped.
Every project here started as a one-sentence MVP and a pact. These are some of the ones who kept it.
Get in touch.
Let me know your thoughts on the framework — did it help you get unstuck? Any suggestions on how to make it better? I'd also love to hear ideas for where this site could go next: new features, tools, anything at all.
Additional Resources
A handful of additional resources I'd personally recommend — some for the idea-to-launch journey, others for building and growing after you've shipped. If you've come across something that belongs on this list, send it my way through the contact form above.
COMMUNITY
Indie Hackers
A community of founders building profitable online businesses without external funding. Great case studies, ideas, and articles written by those who've done it before.
Special mention: if you need one talk to get you off the couch, make it Pieter Levels' Turning side projects into profitable startups — levels.io/startups
IDEA
How to Get Startup Ideas — Paul Graham
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham reframes how to think about finding great startup ideas. Just keep in mind he has VC-backed ventures in mind when judging whether an idea is good or not.
BUILD
The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
The foundational framework for building a product systematically: build the smallest thing you can, measure whether it works, learn from what you find, repeat.
BUILD
Zero to One — Peter Thiel
While Ries says iterate fast and let the market guide you, Thiel argues the best businesses don't compete — they create. Both great books to read back to back.
EARLY GROWTH
Do Things That Don't Scale — Paul Graham
Another essay from Graham — his take on how to make an early startup succeed and get the growth engine going.