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The first version of our financial app forced customers to fax a signup form in 2018.
It worked.
That experience taught me a lesson every founder eventually learns the hard way: early traction matters more than elegant systems. If you are waiting to build something polished before testing demand, you are probably waiting too long.
This is the story of how an “ugly” MVP helped us validate trust, surface real customer behavior, and avoid the most common mistake that stalls early-stage companies—overbuilding before the market says yes.
When faxing was a feature
When we launched UNest’s first savings and investment app for young families, the experience was designed to feel modern and effortless. Parents could upload a photo of their child, tap a few buttons, and see how $25 a month might grow into $100,000 by age 18. Opening a 529 custodial account suddenly felt as easy as ordering takeout.
Behind the scenes, in 2018, the only way to actually open that 529 account through the registered financial advisor was by faxing a PDF to a US state. When the first fax successfully went through, we celebrated like we’d just closed a Series A. A few days later, the provider called: “We no longer accept faxes. Please send everything by snail mail.”
It felt absurd and fragile. In hindsight, it was exactly the right way to start. Building a proof of concept without significant investment forced us to focus on what mattered most: validating demand before scaling infrastructure.
How the best startups begin small
It wasn’t just UNest. The most iconic startups didn’t start polished — they started scrappy.
- Zappos: Nick Swinmurn photographed shoes in stores, posted them online, bought pairs at retail, and shipped them himself.
- Airbnb: Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia rented air mattresses in their apartment during a sold-out conference and served breakfast to guests.
- Uber: Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp manually texted a small circle of limo drivers for an invite-only service.
These founders weren’t obsessed with elegant systems. They were all focused on taking the fastest path from idea to minimum viable product.
What an MVP really is
An MVP isn’t a simplified version of your final product. It’s the most basic version you can build to test demand and gather real customer feedback. Many founders aim for completeness instead of clarity, dreaming of full feature sets, flawless UX, scalable infrastructure and a polished backend. Reality looks very different.
A real MVP is just enough frontend to deliver value, paired with a messy, manual backend. Your product can look polished to customers while being completely unscalable behind the scenes. That’s not a flaw — it’s the point.
Learning through an ugly MVP
One of the biggest surprises in building the UNest MVP wasn’t technical — it was emotional. Onboarding wasn’t just a funnel. It was a trust test.
Early data showed parents dropping off at the second screen. The issue: We were asking for both the child’s and the parent’s Social Security numbers too early. Compliance made sense, but from a human perspective, it was intimidating. Parents weren’t rejecting the product — they were rejecting a moment that felt too risky.
The fix wasn’t complex engineering. We moved SSN requests later in the flow and added plain-English explanations about security and why the information was required. Completion rates improved almost immediately.
The lesson was simple: Get something clickable into customers’ hands as early as possible. You don’t need perfect systems to test trust. You need a product that works just well enough to let users show you where it doesn’t.
Those early beta lessons forced a bigger realization: the UNest MVP was working because it was ugly. The friction, the manual processes, and the imperfect systems surfaced exactly what mattered most — where users hesitated, what they trusted and what they were willing to push through. Across industries and decades, startups that win don’t begin with polish — they begin with learning.
Three rules that actually matter
Progress comes from learning, not polish. MVPs work when they help founders replace assumptions with evidence. These three rules consistently show up in companies that eventually scale:
1. Speed over perfection
Markets reward learning velocity, not elegance. Early-stage founders often believe a product needs to be “ready” before it faces the world. Perfect products delay the one thing that matters most: real-world feedback.
2. Get customer feedback fast
Features don’t create clarity — conversations do. Early users will forgive flaws, missing functionality and manual processes. What they won’t forgive is being ignored.
3. Prove demand before spending big
Capital doesn’t fix uncertainty — it amplifies it. Scaling before validating demand locks in the wrong decisions and makes them expensive to undo.
We followed the same discipline. Proof came first. Investment followed. The strongest MVPs don’t minimize effort — they minimize regret.
The first version of our financial app forced customers to fax a signup form in 2018.
It worked.
That experience taught me a lesson every founder eventually learns the hard way: early traction matters more than elegant systems. If you are waiting to build something polished before testing demand, you are probably waiting too long.