I am doing the same. I won't invest until I have a working MVP. Naturally, finishing it afterwards is challenging with little free time, but it can be slowly progressed.
I think of this as the "garage band problem". Imagine a bunch of teens deciding to make a band. They come up with a name, make t-shirts, even get the cover for the bass drum -- but how much did they actually play?
Personally, I'll snag a domain if it's really good -- like one word or a proper combo of words, spellable, etc... I won't set it to renew, though.
Good idea. Also
- putting side projects on subdomains of your main domain / using cloudflare tunnel
- Tailscale funnel to run services from your computer
I’ve only bought one domain name since then and got the project out!
I think the domain name is your reward for finishing your minimum viable product.