A prototype proves interest. Production proves operations. The gap is where most runway burns: webhooks that never retry, emails that fail quietly, partial refunds that desync the ledger, mobile layouts that break on real devices.
Founders underestimate observability. You need to know when checkout fails, which step users abandon onboarding, and whether payouts lag. That means structured logging, error alerts, and an admin view ops can use without calling an engineer.
We treat production readiness as part of the MVP scope — not a phase after launch. Auth, roles, payments, email, and basic monitoring ship in the same 8-week window as the hero feature. The demo and the live product are the same codebase.
If you already have a prototype, we do not throw it away by default. We assess what is salvageable, what is debt, and what must be rebuilt before real GMV. That honesty saves more time than optimism.