← THE COURSEDAY 04 OF 07

DAY 04 / Der Stack

You don't even know what tools to use

Supabase? Firebase? Vercel? Cloudflare? Here's what actually works.

347 results, all contradicting each other

Yesterday: check if your code is broken. Today: stop researching and start building.

You're ready to start building. You open Google: "best database for SaaS".

347 results. All contradicting each other.

Every tab open at once
Database: "Use Firebase!" / "No, use Supabase!" / "Actually, use PlanetScale!" / "Real developers use PostgreSQL on AWS!"
Hosting: Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare vs Railway vs...
Authentication: Supabase Auth vs Auth0 vs Clerk vs Firebase Auth vs...
Email: SendGrid vs Resend vs Postmark vs SES vs...
Where it leaves you
You're paralyzed. Analysis paralysis.
You spend 2 weeks researching instead of building.

Here's the truth: 80-90% of SaaS apps need the SAME tools.

The tools every SaaS actually needs

Strip away the noise and the list is short. Almost every SaaS app is built on the same handful of pieces:

Database
Where your data lives.
Hosting
Where your app runs.
Authentication
How users log in.
Email
How you talk to them.
Payments
How you get paid.
File storage
Where uploads go.
Analytics
How you see what's happening.

That's the whole game. The 347 tabs are just fights over which brand fills each slot.

The stack that actually matters

I built FIKR Space (679 tables, 2M+ lines of code) for €2,750 total tool cost.

Not €100k in AWS bills. Not a DevOps team. €2,750.

Everything else is optional.

Start with €20/month (Claude subscription). Scale to €125/month when you have revenue.

Why this stack?

I compared 19 tool categories. Tried different combinations. This stack won on every axis that matters:

Coverage
Covers 80-90% of SaaS use cases.
Scale
Scales to millions of users.
Cost
Costs almost nothing to start.
AI-friendly
AI knows how to use it (important!).
Grade
Production-grade from day one.

The Complete Stack Reference Guide For Non-Technical People

I'm sending you the full guide so you never open that Google tab again. What you'll get:

The €0/month starter stack
Launch without spending anything.
The €125/month production stack
When you have paying customers.
19 tool categories compared
Database, hosting, email, payments, auth, analytics.
Why I chose each tool
With alternatives.
What to use when
MVP vs scaling.

Stop researching. Start building.

Every day you research, someone else is shipping

Tomorrow: the ONE thing you MUST get right from day one. Get this wrong, and everything built on top is wrong.

Every day you spend researching is a day someone else is building. The solopreneur era is happening NOW. While you're comparing tools, others are shipping products.

This guide ends the paralysis. Download it. Pick your stack. Start building tomorrow.

—Luis

If you picked A or E, your problem was never the tools — it's that researching feels like work without the risk of building something people can judge. Comparison is a hiding place. The 347 results aren't a decision to make; they're 347 excuses not to start.

If you picked B or C, you're closer than you think — you've got a stack, you just don't trust it because someone louder online uses something else. Here's the tell: the people shipping products aren't in the comparison threads. Pick the boring, AI-friendly stack and go build tomorrow.

SELF-ASSESSMENT
01
Be honest: how far into building have you actually gotten?
  • A - I have 20 tabs open comparing databases and I haven't written a line
  • B - I've picked tools but keep second-guessing whether they're the 'real developer' choice
  • C - I chose a stack, started building, and stopped when a new 'better' tool went viral
  • D - I'm building on a stack and I don't care what Twitter says about it
  • E - I've been 'researching' for weeks and calling it progress
YOUR NEXT STEPTake the Founder Trap Test