If Kids Can Ship an MVP in Weeks, What's Stopping Your Team?

My two kids, Marko (12) and Mia (10), built an online product called PripravaNaPrijimacky.sk. It helps students prepare for 8-year and 4-year grammar school admission tests in Slovakia. They built it in December, launched in January, ran Meta ads, and earned 1,800+ euros (US$2k+) by mid-February.

Marko built the application with Cursor and Opus 4.5. Mia used Gemini and Nano Banana to create the ad creatives. No formal experience. Just a problem, a solution, and modern tools.

Why It Worked: They Understood the Problem

Here's the crucial part: they knew their ICP. Parents don't know how to prepare their kids for these admission tests, and they're willing to pay for help. Marko went through it two years ago. Mia is going through it this year. They lived the pain.

The solution wasn't built in a vacuum. It came from first-hand understanding. That's why the product resonated.

What Actually Changed

AI tools have lowered the bar for building and marketing. The kids had no years of experience. They had a clear problem, a meaningful solution, and the same tools any team can use. Cursor, Gemini, Nano Banana. All available to your engineers and your marketing team.

So the real question shifts. It's no longer "can we build?" It's "do we understand the problem well enough?"

The New Competitive Advantage

When building is easy, understanding the problem and coming up with a meaningful solution matter more than ever. Tools are democratized. Domain insight isn't.

If kids can ship revenue in weeks, the bottleneck for adult teams is rarely "we can't build." It's "we don't know the problem well enough" or "we're not solving it meaningfully." That's the uncomfortable truth.

What This Means for Founders and CTOs

Stop over-investing in build capability when the bar is low. Invest in understanding your ICP. AI changes who can contribute (as we've written about what happens when a CTO makes AI non-negotiable), and it raises the bar on problem-solution fit.

Going forward, good MVPs will come from teams that know the pain. Not just teams that can code fast.

The Real Takeaway

Your team has more experience and the same tools. The differentiator isn't headcount or tech stack. It's how well you understand the problem and how meaningfully you solve it. That's what the kids got right.

What would change if you led with that?