The problem
Northline’s founders could demo the vision in a notebook. In software, it was a pile of dashboards nobody would pay for yet. They needed a first version a specific buyer could use without a guided tour — and they needed it before the runway got interesting.
The approach
We killed half the roadmap in the first workshop. The product became one job: show a team where their usage is leaking money, in a view a CFO can forward. Everything else went on a dated list.
The solution
A Nuxt app with a NestJS API, auth, a billing hook, and three screens that do the job. Empty states that teach. Export that doesn’t feel like an afterthought. We left seams for the features they still want — without pretending those features were in v1.
The result
Northline ran paid pilots in week six. Customers described the product accurately in their own words, which is the only test that matters. The founders still have a long list. They also have revenue, and a codebase that can take the next slice without a rewrite.