The $30 MVP Sprint

THE PREMISE You have one day and $30. By the end of it, something must be live. Not a slide deck, not a mockup, not a prototype behind a password. A real product that a real person can open and use right now. AI is not optional. It is your primary tool. Claude, Bolt, Cursor, v0, Glide, whatever it takes. The speed of AI is what makes this possible in a day. The thinking is still yours. THE RULES 1. The problem must come from your own life. Something you have experienced personally, not something you think other people need. 2. AI tools are mandatory as the build method. You are not being tested on your ability to code from scratch. You are being tested on your ability to direct AI to build what you mean. 3. $30 is the hard budget ceiling. You must account for every dollar: domain, hosting, tool credits, whatever. Free tiers count as free. Nothing counts unless you can show the spend. 4. By 5pm, the product must be live at a real URL and usable by someone who was not involved in building it. THE DAY 9:00am: Problem pitches, 90 seconds each. What is the problem, who has it, why you. 9:30am: Build begins. 12:30pm: Midpoint check. Working demo, or you course-correct. 4:00pm: Freeze. No new features. Fixes only. 4:30pm: Live demos, 3 minutes each. Someone from outside the room uses it on screen. 5:00pm: Verdict. JUDGING Three questions only: Does it work? Can a real person complete the core action without help from the builder? Does it solve the problem it claimed to solve? Was the $30 spent intelligently, or wasted? No points for design. No points for ambition. No points for complexity. Only for something that works. WHAT YOU TAKE AWAY A live product at a real URL. A certificate. The experience of having shipped something. Once you have done it once, the threshold is gone.