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The First Version Is a Question

The assumption underneath a project is either tested by the first version or never tested at all.

The first version of anything isn’t a product.

When we started nodl, the question wasn’t “can we build a Bitcoin node?” We could. The question was whether anyone would pay to skip the command line. The first device shipped answered that. Everything after was refinement.

Most people treat the first version as a draft. It isn’t. It’s the first chance to find out the assumption is wrong.

Skip it, and you optimize toward a problem that doesn’t exist. Clean code, wrong direction.

Get the answer as fast as possible. Then build the product.