Hi Reader,

Welcome to Hal9 Weekly — insights from our founder Javier on turning AI ideas into real products.

Javier's Insights:

The 3 Mistakes Making Your AI MVP Take Too Long

If your AI MVP is taking 3+ months to build, you're probably making one of these mistakes:

1. Scope Creep

You're trying to build the full vision instead of the minimum viable product.

Founders come to us wanting 10 features when they really only need 1 that proves the core value. The whole point of an MVP is to be minimal—but nobody wants to compromise.

The hard truth? Every extra feature adds weeks to your timeline and pushes back the only thing that matters: getting real customer feedback.

2. Your Tech Team Is Overcomplicating It

Sometimes it's not the founder adding features—it's the engineers saying "this can't be done in a month."

They want to build custom AI models from scratch or perfect the architecture before launch. But there's always a way to simplify the tech and ship something in 30 days.

Perfect architecture doesn't matter if you're building the wrong product. Speed to market does.

3. You're Changing Requirements Every Week

You start building a coffee shop finder app, then two weeks in you pivot to a coffee bean recommendation tool.

Every time you change direction, the clock restarts. You end up with 6 months of building and zero real customer feedback.

Iteration is good—but finish the MVP first, let customers use it, then iterate based on reality. Don't change scope mid-build.

The Bottom Line:

The goal isn't perfection. It's learning.

Ship something in 30 days and start getting real feedback from real users. That's how you find product-market fit—not by building in isolation for months.

Which of these mistakes are you making right now?

Customer Success Story: SmallTownMove

From Concept to Launch: Building an AI Town Finder in 2 Months

SmallTownMove had an ambitious vision: help people discover their ideal small town across the USA using AI-powered recommendations based on jobs, lifestyle, and housing data.

The challenge? They needed to process data from thousands of towns, generate SEO-optimized content at scale, create consistent AI-enhanced imagery, and deliver a polished user experience—all in approximately two months.

The Challenge:

SmallTownMove needed an MVP that could:

• Integrate diverse data sources (real-estate APIs, location services, government statistics)
• Generate unique, SEO-friendly content for thousands of towns
• Create consistent, high-quality AI-generated images that felt inspirational yet realistic
• Deliver an intuitive, polished UX ready for customer use and search engine optimization
• Build the foundation for future features like climate-based filtering

Hal9's Solution:

Working with the Hal9 Platform, our team of data scientists, engineers, and designers delivered a complete MVP in just 2.5 months:

🏘️ Built a comprehensive web platform with advanced filters for jobs, lifestyle amenities, and housing options

📝 Generated SEO-optimized content using AI to highlight each town's unique benefits, positioning SmallTownMove for AI-driven search trends

🎨 Created AI-enhanced imagery with a consistent, inspirational style based on real-world data, avoiding generic visuals

💎 Designed a high-quality UX with an intuitive interface that felt polished and ready for market

The Results:

SmallTownMove launched with data coverage for thousands of small towns across the USA, offering users a compelling, personalized town discovery experience. The SEO-optimized content and consistent imagery positioned them strongly for search engines, while the polished UX enhanced user engagement from day one.

Most importantly? They clarified their product vision through real user feedback, enabling them to plan strategic expansions confidently.

"From data processing and design to AI recommendations, Hal9 delivered my product in two months."​
— Rocco Seyboth, Founder @ SmallTownMove

Let’s Talk

Got an AI idea/building something and want to chat about it?

Book a free consultation with Javier — he’ll help you validate it before you build, so you don’t lose time chasing the wrong version.

Talk soon,

—The Hal9 Team