The Solo Founder’s Tech Stack: How I Choose Tools When I’m the Whole Team

When you’re a solo founder — designer, developer, product manager, and marketer rolled into one — every tool decision carries extra weight. You don’t have a team to delegate to. If a tool is complex, you’re the one spending nights learning it. If it breaks, you’re the one fixing it at 2am.

After building multiple products solo, here’s my framework for choosing tools that actually work when you’re the whole team.

Principle 1: Optimize for Speed to Ship, Not Theoretical Scale

The biggest mistake solo founders make is building for millions of users before they have 10. Kubernetes for a side project. Microservices for an MVP. A custom design system before the first paying customer.

I choose tools that let me go from idea to deployed product in days, not weeks. That means picking boring, well-documented technology with large communities and good defaults.

My current default stack: Next.js for the frontend, Tailwind CSS for styling, a PostgreSQL database, and Vercel for hosting. It handles 99% of what I need to build and deploy, and I can explain every part of it.

Principle 2: One Tool Per Job

Every tool you add is another thing to maintain, update, debug, and pay for. I’m ruthless about consolidation. If a framework handles routing, styling, and API routes, I don’t add separate tools for each.

Before adding any new dependency, I ask: “Can something I already use do this?” The answer is usually yes. The npm ecosystem has a package for everything, but that doesn’t mean you need all of them.

Principle 3: Design and Development Should Be the Same Workflow

When you’re both the designer and the developer, context-switching between Figma and VS Code is expensive. I minimize that gap by designing in code whenever possible.

Tailwind CSS makes this practical. Instead of designing pixel-perfect mockups and then translating them to code, I build directly in the browser with utility classes. The iteration speed is 5x faster, and the “design” is always production-ready because it is the production code.

I still use Figma for complex layouts, brand explorations, and client presentations. But for my own products, the browser is my design tool.

Principle 4: Automate the Boring Stuff Early

Deployment, testing, database migrations, image optimization — these tasks aren’t hard, but they eat time when done manually. I automate them on day one.

Git push triggers deployment. CI runs tests. Images get optimized at build time. Database schema changes are versioned and applied automatically. This costs 2–3 hours to set up and saves hundreds of hours over the life of the project.

Principle 5: AI as a Force Multiplier

AI tools are the solo founder’s unfair advantage. I use them for first-draft code generation, content writing, code review, debugging, and research. Not as a replacement for thinking — as an accelerant for execution.

The key is knowing where AI helps (boilerplate, repetitive tasks, brainstorming) and where it doesn’t (architecture decisions, UX strategy, nuanced design choices). I never ship AI-generated code without reading and understanding every line.

My Current Stack

• Frontend: Next.js + React + Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Next.js API routes + PostgreSQL
• Hosting: Vercel (frontend) + managed Postgres
• Design: Figma (exploration) + Browser (production)
• AI Tools: Claude for code + writing, Cursor for development
• CMS: WordPress + ACF for content-heavy sites
• Version Control: Git + GitHub
• Monitoring: Vercel Analytics + Sentry for errors

The Takeaway

The best tech stack for a solo founder isn’t the most sophisticated one. It’s the one that lets you move fast, stay focused, and ship consistently. Every tool should earn its place by saving you more time than it costs. If it doesn’t, cut it.