The Most Expensive Lesson in Software Development Most startups don't fail because they wrote bad code. They fail because they wrote the wrong code, and they wrote too much of it before a single real user ever touched it. I've been building software for over 20 years. I've watched well-funded teams spend eight months perfecting a product that the market didn't want. I've also watched scrappy two-person teams ship a rough but working product in six weeks, learn what users actually needed, and iterate into something genuinely successful. The difference wasn't talent. It wasn't funding. It was the discipline to build a Minimum Viable Product — and the experience to know what that actually means in practice. This isn't a theoretical guide. It's what we've learned from dozens of real MVP engagements across fintech, healthtech, SaaS, and marketplaces.…