A one-page written document that forces you to articulate exactly who your user is, what problem they have, and why the existing solutions fall short. This is the north star you'll return to every week to make sure you're still building the right thing.
Your validated, scoped plan for what you're building. This expands the problem brief with a competitive analysis, a market positioning statement, and a prioritized MVP feature list — the five core things your app must do, and nothing else.
Before touching colour or typography, you'll map every path a user can take through your app. This deliverable is the skeleton — the bones that everything else gets built on. Paired with lo-fi wireframes of every primary screen.
Your complete visual language — built once, used everywhere. This is the most leveraged deliverable in the program. A well-built design system means every subsequent screen takes a fraction of the time. This is also the file you'll hand to AI coding tools later.
Every screen your app needs — designed at full fidelity using your design system. This includes the obvious states (the happy path) and the invisible ones (empty states, error messages, loading screens) that separate polished apps from amateur ones.
Your design, made interactive and tested by real people before a single line of code is written. This is the most important quality gate in the program — a week of testing now saves weeks of rebuilding later. You'll fix the problems before they get baked into the code.
The moment your design becomes real. By the end of week 7 your app exists on an actual device — not a simulator, not a prototype, a real app you can tap. The navigation works, the onboarding screen renders, and the home screen is live. Small, but real.
Your app now has a brain. Real data lives in a real database. Users can sign up, log in, and have their information persist between sessions. This is the infrastructure everything else gets built on top of — and with Supabase and AI, it's configured in a day.
All five of your core MVP features are functional, connected to real data, and usable by a real person. This is the biggest week of the program — the one where it all comes together. The app you hypothesised in Week 2 now actually exists and works.
Your app goes in front of real strangers for the first time. Ten people you've never met download it, use it, and tell you what breaks. You fix the critical bugs, polish the rough edges, and set up analytics so you can see exactly how people use it after launch.
Your app's storefront — the thing strangers see before they decide whether to download. A weak listing kills a good app. You'll write compelling copy with AI, generate polished screenshots with Midjourney, and optimise every metadata field for discoverability.
A live, public-facing website for your app — separate from the App Store. This is where you control the full story: your screenshots, your copy, your email capture, your social proof. It's also the URL you'll put in your Product Hunt post and bio.
The moment you've been building toward. Your app goes live on the App Store. You post on Product Hunt. Real strangers download it. The 12 weeks of work becomes a product anyone in the world can use. This is what graduation looks like at Element.
Most app builders run out of momentum the week after launch. Your growth plan is the antidote — a specific, actionable roadmap for the 90 days after Demo Day. Distribution channels, retention mechanics, content strategy, and the next 5 features in priority order.