Back to the blog MVP field notes

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Your product won't be either. Most new founders know this and still try to build the whole city before anyone has walked through the gate.

Darryll Wolloff  ·  8 October 2026  ·  2 min read

Julius Caesar standing proudly on a balcony above ancient Rome at its height, with the Colosseum and aqueducts behind him
Most founders try to build this on day one.
The perfectionist

Day one, and the plan is the whole of Rome.

Roads, aqueducts, a Colosseum with a settings page. Eighteen months of building and not one customer has seen any of it. Caesar is very proud. Caesar is also running out of money.

The stall

The smart founder sells a poster of Rome.

Same city. One trestle table, one laminated poster, one very good toga. You stand there and watch who stops.

Darryll dressed as Caesar behind a wooden market stall, with a poster of Rome pinned to a board behind him
The cheapest version of Rome there is.

"Rome? Meh. Can you do the Moon?"

Customer one, not stopping

Good. That cost you one poster.

Yes, we can build the Moon. It will be expensive, so let's find out if anyone needs it first. A poster costs next to nothing.

The Moon's surface with the blue Earth hanging in the black sky, a swan float, a pink flamingo and a sign for a lunar oyster bar
What they asked about.
Darryll in a white spacesuit at the market stall with a Moon poster behind him, holding the Rome poster while a customer with a coffee walks away
Swapped in ten minutes.

"The Moon's a bit far. Got anything in Dudley?"

Customer two, checking the bus times

Another poster, and this one is cheap to build.

Dudley already has roads and nobody needs a rocket. You are still not offended. You are collecting data, and data is a lot cheaper than bricks.

Dudley town centre with the ruined castle on its wooded hill above a busy market street
What they asked for next.
Darryll in a spacesuit with his helmet under one arm at the stall, grinning while two customers point at the Dudley poster
Poster number three.
The queue

Then one poster gets a queue.

Nobody predicted Dudley. Nobody needed to, because none of it was built yet. And because you only paid for posters, you still have money left to build it.

A long queue of customers holding cash and phones, with Darryll in a spacesuit at the stall looking delighted
The only validation that counts.
Now you build

This is the moment to pick up the shovel.

You know which place, and it is far cheaper than the Moon. Lay the foundations, then add each new district when people keep asking for it. Rome got built the same way, just slower and with more emperors.

The poster was only ever a test: a cheap way to decide what deserves building. The building itself is real code, and that's where an Onion Sprint comes in.

Darryll in a hard hat and hi-vis over a white spacesuit on a building site, holding blueprints, with his space helmet on a fence post beside him
Now the real build starts.
In software terms

What the poster actually is.

The poster

A landing page, a clickable prototype, or a button that leads to a coming-soon page.

The stall

Ten real conversations with people who might pay. A survey does not count.

The shrug

Free information. Change the poster and carry on.

The queue

Sign-ups, deposits, pre-orders or a paid pilot. A sign-up is curiosity. A deposit is a lot more convincing.

The money left

Runway. Posters are cheap, so you can still afford the build.

The build

Your MVP, in the order people queue for it.

Part two: Rome lost to Dudley. But what are people actually queueing for? Nobody wants Dudley. They want the zoo.

You might be building Rome.

Your customers might want Dudley. The difficult bit is knowing what to test next, and what deserves building.

If you're sitting on an idea, or already building something and questioning the direction, let's talk. Bring what you've got. We'll work through what needs proving and what can wait.

Book a conversation How an Onion Sprint works

Already live and not sure it's ready? See the Readiness Review.

Darryll Wolloff is the founder of TechConnex. He advises early-stage founders and still writes and ships production code himself.