How do I cut scope when every feature feels required for the first release Cut the Scope

Stop cutting features and start picking one person.

Write down one real photographer you know, with a name. Not a persona, a person. Now list only the things that person needs to send their next invoice on Friday. Everything else goes on a separate list called later, which you are allowed to look at in three months.

Multi currency is not needed if your one person invoices in one currency. Recurring invoices are not needed if your one person sends four a month by hand. A client portal is definitely not needed for one person who emails a PDF.

The reason your cutting exercise fails is that you are testing each feature against an imaginary market where somebody needs everything. Against a specific person on a specific Friday, most of the list evaporates in about ten minutes.

Do the manual version of everything you can. You do not need to build recurring invoices, you need a monthly reminder in your own calendar and five minutes of clicking. You do not need PDF templates, you need one template that looks decent.

This feels like cheating and it is the single most useful habit I have picked up. Anything a human can do behind the curtain in under ten minutes a week does not need code in version one, and doing it by hand teaches you exactly what the code eventually needs to handle.

A test that works on stubborn lists: for each item, finish the sentence "without this, the user cannot ...". If the ending is a real blocking action like send an invoice or get paid, it stays. If the ending is something like it would be less convenient or it would look unprofessional, it goes. Eleven items usually becomes three.

Four months with nothing shipped is the actual data point here. Whatever your cutting method, the fact that you have iterated on the list rather than on real usage means the list is not being tested against anything. Even a broken version in someone's hands would tell you more than another round of prioritising.

Timebox rather than scope box if the feature argument keeps winning. Two weeks, ship whatever exists at the end of it, no extensions. It resolves the argument by making it irrelevant, and the version that exists in two weeks is usually a lot closer to complete than you expect.