How to Choose the Right Tech Stack for Your Startup

Every founder asks the same question: "What tech stack should I use?"

The real answer is: it doesn't matter as much as you think. But it does matter a little. Here's how to think about it.

The Stack Decision Framework

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Who will build it? (Your team's existing skills)
2. How fast do you need to ship? (Time to market)
3. What does it need to do? (Technical requirements)

Most of the time, the answers point to a small set of reasonable choices. The rest is preference.

What We Use (And Why)

After building dozens of products, we've converged on a default stack that works for most startups:

Frontend

Next.js + Tailwind CSS

• Full-stack React framework with App Router
• File-based routing, server components, streaming
• Tailwind for styling — fast to write, easy to maintain
• Vercel deployment is magical (automatic previews, edge functions)

Database

PostgreSQL via Supabase

• The most battle-tested relational database on the planet
• Supabase adds real-time subscriptions, storage, and auth
• Free tier is generous; pricing scales predictably

Auth

Clerk (B2C) or Supabase Auth (B2B)

• Never build auth from scratch. Ever.
• Clerk is best-in-class for consumer apps (social login, MFA, user management)
• Supabase Auth works well for simpler B2B use cases

Payments

Stripe

• The industry standard. Don't second-guess it.
• Stripe handles subscriptions, invoicing, tax, international payments
• Webhook reliability is excellent

Infrastructure

Vercel (frontend) + Supabase (backend) + Cloudflare (DNS + CDN)

• Zero devops overhead
• Global CDN by default
• 99.99% uptime without you doing anything

When to Deviate

"We need real-time features"

Next.js supports Server-Sent Events and WebSockets. For heavy real-time (collaborative editing, live game state), consider adding Ably or Liveblocks.

"We're building a mobile app"

React Native + Expo is the fastest path if you have a React team. If your product is fundamentally native (camera, bluetooth, background processing), go native Swift/Kotlin.

"We need an AI/ML component"

Python for ML workloads, then expose it via a simple REST API that your Next.js app consumes. Don't rewrite your entire backend in Python — just isolate the AI parts.

"We have massive scale requirements"

You probably don't. Premature optimization is the most common mistake in early-stage startups. Start with the boring stack. You can scale it later.

Supabase runs on top of Postgres. Postgres can handle millions of rows without blinking. Next.js scales horizontally via Vercel. You'll hit product-market fit issues before infrastructure issues.

The Most Common Mistake

Choosing a stack based on what's trending on Twitter.

Every month there's a new "best" stack. Most of it is noise. What actually matters:

1. Your team can build with it
2. There's good documentation and a large community
3. It's been in production somewhere for at least 2 years
4. You can hire engineers who know it

By these criteria, the boring choices win every time.

Practical Advice

If you're a solo technical founder: Pick the stack you know best. Speed beats optimization at this stage.

If you're hiring a dev shop: Ask what they've shipped with this stack recently. Ask for references. The stack matters less than the team.

If you're hiring your first engineers: Choose a stack with strong hiring markets. React/Node.js engineers are everywhere. Advanced Haskell engineers are not.

If you're building for 10 years: Boring > trendy. The startup graveyard is full of companies that chose microservices when they needed a monolith, Kubernetes when they needed a $5 VPS, and NoSQL when they needed a SQL join.

The Bottom Line

Use Next.js, Postgres, Stripe, and Vercel for 80% of startup use cases. Deviate when you have a specific technical reason, not because someone on Reddit told you it's the future.

The best stack is the one your team ships with. Everything else is a distraction.