Build your product like Lego, not concrete.

Intro

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth.

Most SaaS products don’t fail because of bad ideas. They fail because the foundation can’t handle growth.

You add one new feature to please a customer, then another, then another. A year later your product feels like a duct-taped mix of good intentions. Every improvement takes twice as long. Every fix breaks something else.

The problem isn’t effort. It’s structure.

AI makes this worse and better at the same time. It lets you build features faster than ever, but if the structure is weak, you’re just scaling chaos.

So here’s the principle.

Products that scale are built from small, independent parts that each do one job well. They connect cleanly, they evolve easily, and they don’t depend on everything else staying still.

That’s what “building flexible frameworks” means.

It’s about building your product so it can grow in any direction without starting over.

Let me give you an example.

A startup once told me their app “felt like a Frankenstein of good ideas.” Every customer request turned into another half-finished tab or modal. When we stepped back, we realized their product didn’t have structure. It had layers of patches.

So we stripped it down to three core features and rebuilt each one as a standalone block. Nothing fancy, just clear, repeatable logic. Each feature could live on its own or plug into the others. When they showed it to investors, the product suddenly made sense. The team could explain what it did, how it worked, and what came next.

That’s what this exercise helps you do.

You’re not rebuilding your product today. You’re doing a discovery pass, a future-vision exercise. You’ll look at your product and ask, “If I could build this from scratch, what would stay, what would merge, and what would I rebuild differently?”

The goal isn’t to throw things away. It’s to clarify how your product should evolve.

When you finish this step, you’ll know three things.

1. Which parts of your product are stable and reusable.
2. Which parts are brittle and block future growth.
3. What the “next version” of your product could look like if you built it cleanly.

This is the bridge between clarity and creation. You’ve simplified what exists. Now you’ll design the shape of what comes next.

Now move to the guide below.

Guide: Rethink how your product is built so it can scale with AI.

Instructions

Pick one feature in your product that users interact with most. It could be onboarding, analytics, dashboards, or something else central to your experience. Then answer the four questions below.

Question 1.

How many steps or screens does it take for a user to reach value in this feature?

A. One or two clear steps.

B. Three to five steps with some repetition or overlap.

C. More than five, or it’s not clear where one step ends and another begins.

What this means:

• A: good. this feature is self-contained and efficient.
• B: you’ve probably bolted new ideas onto an old flow. review each step and combine what’s redundant.
• C: your feature has grown sideways. it’s time to sketch what a “clean version” would look like if you started from zero.

Action:

Write one way you could simplify this flow without losing power.

Example: Combine setup and configuration into one guided step.

Question 2.

If you added one new capability to this feature tomorrow using AI, would it fit smoothly or cause ripple effects elsewhere?

A. it would fit easily. we designed for that.

B. it would work, but we’d have to tweak other features.

C. it would break something or require a full rethink.

What this means:

• A: good. your product is modular.
• B: your product is connected but not flexible. time to define clearer boundaries between features.
• C: your product is tightly coupled. AI-driven speed will make this worse, not better.

Action:

Describe one small change that would make this feature more independent.

Example: Separate reporting logic from onboarding so updates don’t collide.

Question 3.

If you had to explain this feature’s purpose to a new team member in one sentence, could you do it?

A. Yes. it does one clear job.

B. Kind of. it overlaps with other features.

C. No. it’s a mix of multiple jobs.

What this means:

• A: great. this is what a reusable building block looks like.
• B: overlap creates maintenance pain. decide which feature should “own” each outcome.
• C: this is a blob feature. split it into smaller, focused pieces before adding anything else.

Action:

Write one sentence that defines the single job this feature should own.

Example: Helps users connect their data and confirm that tracking works.

Question 4.

If you were rebuilding your product from scratch today, would this feature look the same?

A. Yes. it already fits how we’d design it now.

B. Mostly, but I’d change some structure or flow.

C. No. it’s built around outdated logic.

What this means:

• A: Keep this stable. this is a core part of your foundation.
• B: Note what you’d change, and plan to refactor when the opportunity arises.
• C: You’ve outgrown this feature. don’t patch it again. design its future version before touching the code.

Action:

Write one way this feature could evolve in a cleaner, more modular form.

Example: Split the dashboard into reusable cards that can be rearranged per user.

Summary

Pick one improvement from your answers that you can ship or model in the next 30 days.

That becomes your action item for this step.

Next Step:

You just finished step two of the LaunchFast Guide, which is build flexible frameworks.

Next, you’ll move to step three, which is guide and reward progress.

That’s where you’ll learn how to design small wins into the user journey so new customers see value faster and stay longer.