A live quiz game serving 2,000+ players, with 100+ playing at once
Speedego is a real-money quiz game we built for Mathematica LLP. It serves more than 2,000 players, with over 100 playing at the same time, and runs on about $120 a month of AWS.
MVP development
Your first version, from scope to production.
A first version is a bet on what people will pay for. We help founders and businesses decide what goes into it, build it and take it live, with one engineer accountable from the first call to the production release.
Most founders don’t yet have someone who can stop the scope from growing, make the technical decisions and get the product running for real users. We do that work as part of Forward Deployed Engineering.
Scope
What goes into a first version, and what waits.
Most first versions try to do too much. The ones that work do one thing well and reach users early. We settle the scope with you before anything is built.
- A one-sentence summary. It says who the users are, what problem they have and what the product does about it. We check every proposed feature against it.
- The main user journey. The path from opening the product to getting the result. We build it from start to finish before anything else.
- Three feature lists. Each feature is a must have, can wait or do by hand. Good ideas that aren’t essential go on the second list so they don’t delay the launch.
- What to measure. The two or three figures that will show whether the bet is paying off. The product records them from the first day.
- The big technical decisions. We decide early whether to run servers at all, what to generate in advance and what to reuse, because those choices set how much there is to build and to run.
- A scope on one page. We write the whole scope on a single page. If it runs over, something on it can probably wait.
How it gets built
One engineer leads all five stages.
Every project goes through the same five stages. You decide what the product does, and we handle the engineering.
- Understand. We learn about your business, the problem, your users and the constraints you’re working within.
- Define. Together we settle the scope and the technical direction. You get a proposal with the plan, a timeline, a cost estimate and the engineer who will lead the project.
- Build. We work in short sprints, and you get working software every week. When the work needs another skill, your lead engineer brings in someone who has it.
- Deploy. We set up hosting, domains and app store listings, then release the product into the environment it’s meant to run in.
- Continue. We stabilise and document the product, then hand it over or keep building, as agreed.
Proof
First versions we’ve taken to production.
PSC Mocklab launched with no servers of its own, and more than 400 users enrolled in its first two weeks. Speedego serves more than 2,000 players, with over 100 playing at once, on about $120 a month of AWS.
- PSC Mocklab users in two weeks
- 400+
- Servers PSC Mocklab maintains
- 0
- Speedego players
- 2,000+
- Speedego’s AWS bill per month
- $120
The case studies
Turning 15,000 scanned pages into 540,000 exam questions
Kerala PSC aspirants mostly study from scanned Malayalam papers. For Mathematica LLP, we turned more than 15,000 of those pages into a 540,000-question mock-test app that runs without any servers of its own.
Common questions
What does an MVP cost?
It depends on the scope, and settling the scope is the first thing we do. After the Understand and Define stages you get a proposal with the plan, a timeline and a cost estimate, before any build work starts. The contact form asks for a budget range so we can plan the first conversation around it.
How long does it take?
It depends on what the first version has to do. A website with custom design and animation went from kickoff to launch in two weeks. An app with accounts, payments and a backend takes longer. The timeline in your proposal is specific to your project.
Do I need a finished specification?
No. Describe the problem you’re trying to solve or the product you have in mind, and we work out the rest with you. The one-page scope comes out of the Define stage.
What happens after the first version launches?
Real usage shows where it needs work, so we stabilise it and document how it’s built and run. After that you can hand it to your own team or keep improving it with us under an ongoing engagement.
Where is Tascbar based?
Perinthalmanna, in Kerala, India. We work with founders and businesses in India and around the world. If you’re in another time zone, this is how we run projects across the gap.
You bring the problem. We take it to production.
Our office
- Perinthalmanna
MEAEC, State Highway 39
Library & Information Centre, Nellikunnu
Vengoor, Perinthalmanna
Kerala 679325, India