Most marketplace builds fail in the middle: the founder cannot see what is done, the scope creeps, and the first users never arrive. Weekly milestones fix that. Each week ends with something clickable — onboarding, listings, checkout, payouts — not a slide deck.
That cadence also protects the budget. If a feature is going to blow the timeline, it shows up in week two, not week eight. Founders can cut, defer, or pay to extend with eyes open.
We keep the same engineers on the product after launch. The 8-week ship is the start of the relationship, not a handoff to a new team that has to relearn the codebase.