ZaneWithSpoon / Founder / Experimentalist
SHIP
THE MVP.
What happens when you stop waiting for permission, funding, or perfect product-market fit — and simply ship?
ShippingMVPs is an ongoing experiment in building small products, launching them into the real world, and exploring new ways to fund the software that actually gets used.
Who is Zane?
A founder who ships, then writes down what happened.
ZaneWithSpoon
Founder. Builder. Experimenter.
I've spent years building things, breaking things, advising founders and trying to understand what actually makes products survive.
ShippingMVPs is where I document the process.
The goal isn't to predict what will work. The goal is to ship enough things that the market can tell us.
3x Founder
Built, shipped, learned.
Non-profit President
Mission-driven leadership.
Compliance / Trust / Technology
Where safety meets shipping.
The Shipping MVP Philosophy
Stop raising. Start shipping.
Traditional startup building often looks like a long wait before the product ever meets the market. ShippingMVPs flips the order.
Traditional
ShippingMVPs
The purpose of an MVP is not to be impressive. The purpose of an MVP is to discover whether anyone cares. Build the smallest useful version, put it in front of people, measure what happens. Then either:
Outcome A
DOUBLE DOWN
Outcome B
KILL IT
Do not spend twelve months building something nobody asked for.
// Protocol flow
SHIP
Build the smallest useful product.
LAUNCH
Put it in front of real users.
MARKET
Let users decide whether it deserves attention.
FEES
Capture legitimate economic activity where applicable.
FUND
Allocate a defined portion toward operating the MVP.
SHIP AGAIN
Use what was learned to build the next thing.
How the funding model works
Where does the money go?
If a product creates real economic activity, a clearly disclosed mechanism can route a portion of those fees toward keeping the MVP alive.
DEVELOPMENT
XX%
Engineering and product development.
INFRASTRUCTURE
XX%
Servers, APIs, domains, software.
GROWTH
XX%
Distribution and user acquisition.
RESEARCH
XX%
Testing the next experiment.
Allocation is experimental and may change between products.
The Lab
Small bets. Real users. Public results.
Each experiment is a hypothesis shipped into the real world. Results are documented whether they succeed or fail.
ShippingMVPs
Meta · 2026
The meta-experiment. A public laboratory for shipping small products and exploring alternative funding mechanisms.
Funding: Platform fees / treasury
- Public building journal and MVP launchpad
- Every experiment is documented openly
- Capital and lessons compound into the next build
MVP Funding
Funding · 2026
Can a crypto-native asset generate enough legitimate economic activity to continuously fund the software underneath it?
Funding: Token fees → treasury
- Token attached to a real shipping product, not the product itself
- Defined portion of protocol fees routed to operations
- Full transparency on allocation and spend
Community-Backed Software
Distribution · 2026
Can a community collectively fund products they actually want instead of simply speculating on them?
Funding: Community treasury
- Users become participants, not just customers
- Demand signals directly fund the roadmap
- Researching governance and incentive design
The Crypto Experiment
What if the MVP could fund itself?
What happens when the token is attached to the experiment instead of being the entire product? The token is a component of an economic system, not the product itself.
Market Cap
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Liquidity
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24h Volume
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24h Transactions
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Price
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24h Change
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“The token isn't the product.
The product is the product.”If the only reason people care is because they think the token will go up, the experiment has failed. The interesting question is whether crypto can help bootstrap products that otherwise wouldn't get built.
Disclaimer
Experimental model. Nothing on this website constitutes an offer of securities, investment advice, or a guarantee of returns. Token mechanics, fee allocation and product funding may change as experiments evolve. Crypto assets are highly speculative and may lose their entire value.
Treasury
—
Development spend
—
Infrastructure spend
—
Fees generated
—
Build in public
Nothing hidden. Everything documented.
Every experiment, every dollar, every kill. Transparency is the only way this model earns trust.
Treasury
—
On-chain wallet
Development spend
—
Documented
Infrastructure spend
—
Documented
Fees generated
—
Protocol / platform
Products shipped
0
Counted openly
Experiments killed
0
No survivors hidden
Experiments continued
1
Still building
Experiment log
The timeline so far.
2026
EXPERIMENT STARTED
ShippingMVPs begins exploring crypto-native MVP funding.
2026
MVP SHIPPED
First product launched into the real world.
2026
MARKET RESPONSE
Data collected. Real users, real signal, no fabrication.
2026
FUNDING LOOP
Fee allocation experiment begins. Treasury tracked publicly.
2026
NEXT MVP
Capital and lessons move into the next experiment.
Portfolio
Things I've shipped.
A founder portfolio, not a corporate company page. Some survived. Some didn't. All of them taught me something.
ShippingMVPs
Founder · 2026
Founder laboratory for shipping MVPs and crypto-native funding.
Nonprofit Initiative
President · 2023
Mission-driven organization serving its community.
Compliance Toolkit
Builder · 2023
Internal tooling for compliance and trust workflows.
Token Experiment
Experimenter · 2022
Early crypto-native distribution prototype.
Postmortem: Speculation overwhelmed utility. Killed it, wrote the notes.
Writing
Things I've learned from shipping.
Shipping MVPs in the Age of Crypto
Venture capital is not the only way to finance software. Crypto introduces a strange new possibility: products can potentially create their own economic loops, where usage generates fees and those fees help finance the continued development of the product. This does not mean every product needs a token. Most do not. But for certain internet-native products, it may be worth experimenting with.
Read article7 Reasons Your Business Idea Will Fail
Most ideas die not because the market is wrong, but because the founder never lets the market vote early enough.
Why Your MVP Doesn't Need to Be Good
The purpose of an MVP is to discover whether anyone cares — not to be impressive.
Build Before You Fundraise
Fundraise before building and you risk selling a vision nobody wants. Build before fundraising and you risk running out of money. There is a third path.
What Crypto Gets Right About Distribution
Love it or hate it, crypto built a globally liquid coordination layer for internet-native projects. That part is worth studying.
The Economics of Shipping
Shipping is cheap. Not shipping is extraordinarily expensive. A breakdown of what it actually costs to keep launching.