VP of Product Software — SaaS MVP Built by a Solo Dev in North County San Diego
I'm PJ, in Encinitas. I build SaaS MVPs for VPs of Product who are tired of agency quotes with six zeros and offshore teams that miss the point.
📱 Text me: 858-461-8054Quick answer for VPs of Product evaluating an MVP build:
- Timeline: Real MVP in 4–8 weeks, not 6 months.
- Cost: Typical MVP lands $8k–$25k. Not $150k.
- Stack: Boring, proven tech. No resume-driven architecture.
- Who owns it: You do. Full code, full repo, day one.
Questions VPs of Product actually ask me
How fast can you ship a working MVP I can put in front of design partners?
Usually 4–8 weeks for the first usable version. I scope tight, cut anything that isn't core to the hypothesis you're testing, and ship weekly. You see progress every Friday.
Do I get the code, or am I locked into your platform?
You own everything. GitHub repo in your org, infra in your cloud account, no proprietary wrappers. If you fire me tomorrow, your engineering team picks it up Monday.
How do you handle scope creep when Product keeps pulling in new requirements?
Fixed scope, fixed price per phase. New asks go in a parking lot and we scope a Phase 2. Keeps you honest with your board and keeps me from resenting the project.
Can you work with my existing eng lead or fractional CTO?
Yes, and I prefer it. I'll take architecture review, code reviews, whatever cadence your technical leadership wants. I'm not precious about it.
What stack do you use and why should I care?
Boring stuff: Node/Python, Postgres, React, AWS or Vercel. Whatever your next hire can read on day one. I don't pick tools to pad my resume.
How do we work together if you're solo and I need to show velocity to my CEO?
Weekly demo, Loom updates mid-week, Slack connect for async. You'll have more visibility into my work than you do with most in-house teams. That's the honest truth.
Things I'd tell you over coffee
Ship the ugly version first
Your design partners don't need polish. They need something that runs. Polish kills more MVPs than bugs do.
Don't build auth yourself
Clerk, Auth0, Supabase Auth. Pick one. Burning two weeks on a login flow for an MVP is the clearest signal of a junior team.
Pick 3 metrics, ignore everything else
Activation, weekly active, and one value-moment metric. If your MVP can't instrument those, it can't learn.
Say no to the multi-tenant rebuild
If you're pre-PMF, single-tenant is fine. Multi-tenant refactors are a Phase 3 problem, not a launch problem.
Scope the demo, not the product
Build what you need to close the next 5 design partners. That's it. Every feature beyond that is speculation until someone pays.
Hire a solo dev before a team
One good contractor will out-ship a 4-person agency pod at the MVP stage. Less overhead, fewer handoffs, clearer accountability.
Real quick — who am I?
PJ. Solo tech consultant. Based in Encinitas / Solana Beach. I've built MVPs for Product leaders at seed and Series A SaaS companies. No sales team, no project manager, no markup. Just me, shipping code.
Connect on LinkedInText me. Seriously.
Tell me what you're building. I'll tell you in one text if I can help, what it'll cost, and how long it'll take. No call required.
📱 858-461-8054