How big ideas started small: a look at how some of today’s most iconic companies moved fast, solved real problems, and turned their dreams into reality.
Every founder starts with a moment. Maybe it was a problem they went through themself. Or they noticed something broken that no one else was fixing. Sometimes its just this feeling like why does this still suck in 2025.
But having an idea is the easy bit. Making it real is where most people get stuck. Not cause they are not smart or hard working. But cause the jump from idea to actual working product is way harder than it looks.
At DELTACODES we have been on both sides. We built our own stuff and we also helped other people build theirs. And honestly the best founders we have seen are not trying to be famous or raise 10 million dollars. They just care about solving a real problem and they don't stop.
The Truth About Vision
Vision is not about seeing the future. It’s about seeing clearly what’s broken right now. Most founders confuse random ideas with vision. But ideas are cheap, real vision is when you explain the pain so well that the other person literally feels it. And then you say ok now here is what I am building to fix that.
Look at Alexandr Wang. He is the 27 year old founder of Scale AI. He didn’t start off trying to build some unicorn. He just saw how bad the process of labeling training data was. It was slow. Manual. Boring. And no one was doing it right.
He focused on that boring part of the AI pipeline when no one else cared. He built tools that helped humans and machines work together better. Today Scale powers data for OpenAI, Meta and even the US defense.
His vision was not flashy. But it was real. And he stuck to it.
Build Fast But Not Carelessly
At DELTACODES we meet founders all the time who are stuck in idea jail. Overthinking. Trying to get everything perfect. Delaying launch because the logo is not right or the UI feels meh.
But here is the truth. MVPs are not supposed to be perfect. They are supposed to be fast. Focused. Just enough to test your thinking in the real world.
One founder we really respect is Tessa Clarke from OLIO. Its an app where neighbors can share leftover food. But her first version was literally a whatsapp group and a google form. She just wanted to see if people cared.
Turns out they did. And then she built the tech.
So before you spend 3 months building a feature ask yourself this one thing - is this helping me learn faster or am I just building to make my pitch deck look cooler.
The Quiet Builders Win
You don’t need to go viral. You don’t need press. You just need to deliver real value again and again and again.
Take Shashank Kumar from Razorpay. In 2014 he launched a payment gateway. Nothing fancy. No hype. But it actually worked. While others were adding glitter to the UI, Razorpay was focused on docs and uptime and smooth onboarding.
Today they are a fintech giant. And not because they raised a ton or made a lot of noise. But cause they earned the trust of devs from day one.
So yeah maybe being boring is not so bad. Just care more about your users. That stuff compounds.
Distribution is Half the Battle
You can build the best product in the world but if no one knows about it it’s like screaming in an empty room.
One founder who gets this right is Mathilde Collin from Front. She didn’t just tweet features or post launch updates. She shared honest stories about burnout fundraising hard moments and how she was figuring it all out.
And people listened. Because she was real. And because of that people tried Front. Not because of ads. But because they trusted her.
If you are building in public just be human. Don’t try to go viral. Just be useful.
TLDR
If you’re building something right now whether it’s your first MVP or your tenth try here’s what we’ve learned at DELTACODES and what we keep telling ourselves too
Written by the DELTACODES team
We help early-stage founders bring their ideas to life through thoughtful product design and full stack dev. No fluff. No buzzwords. Just real work.
You can contact me directly - aditya@deltacodes.in
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