As a software engineer turned tech entrepreneur, I founded and scaled two venture-backed SaaS companies with over $100 million of Silicon Valley venture capital raised between them.

The problem was that these ventures had burned mountains of cash by building complex, single-instance, multi-tenant software systems that required sales and implementation people to propel them forward and keep them running. So in 2017, I founded 8base.

8base’s thesis is that there’s an enormous unmet need for tools and platforms that make software development faster, better, and cheaper. 8base now offers a production-ready and straightforward software framework, and our architecture is incredibly important. Why? It’s not only our own tech stack, but also becomes our customer’s as well.

Given our team’s experience as SaaS operators, we had strong opinions that drove our architectural thinking. Some of these include:

  • API-First — Computing infrastructure, data, and business logic should be abstracted into a back end and provisioned via a single, dynamic API.
  • Elasticity — Computing infrastructure should be made available as a fully elastic service to a running application.
  • Front-end flexibility — Software is more art than science these days as companies express themselves technologically to their customers. Builders must be able to design and build user interfaces in any style and across a myriad of form factors.

With that in mind, here is what 8base is built upon.

The 8base tech stack

First, we chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) as our computing infrastructure. It’s the market leader in cloud computing services. We utilize many AWS services, including:

  • serverless computing using AWS Lambda. Applications built using 8base utilize Lambda as well. Serverless is a relatively new model of computing that runs code in response to events while automatically managing required computing resources. Lambda fulfills computing needs like your power company: via a microunit-based, fully elastic, and metered service. It also minimizes the need for DevOps personnel, which translates to less cost for startups.

  • AWS Aurora MySQL and MongoDB Atlas as databases. Both are hosted databases-as-a-service, which makes them fast, redundant, fault-tolerant, managed, and scalable. 8base also provisions a dedicated Aurora MySQL instance to each developer workspace.

  • AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service) for object storage service. However, 8base also does the difficult work of exposing S3 to workspaces and front-end applications. It makes it super easy to store documents, pictures, voice/video files, and more. 8base also uses FileStack so that developers can easily connect their cloud storage, social, and other accounts. We chose S3 because it is inexpensive, fast, reliable, and virtually infinite in its storage capacity.

  • AWS's API Gateway is utilized by the 8base engine and is automatically provisioned for 8base-built apps as a service for creating, publishing, and securing REST and WebSocket APIs.

8base built an incredibly powerful GraphQL API engine as part of the platform. GraphQL is a standard developed by Facebook and was open sourced in 2015. It exposes a single endpoint that allows for dynamic communication between the back end and front end. GraphQL lets front-end developers work very quickly without depending upon back-end developers for specific resources. This API technology helps 8base and teams using 8base to move faster!

We support applications built using any front-end technology; however, 8base itself is made using React. React is an open-source JavaScript library maintained by Facebook and a community of developers. It's optimal for fetching rapidly changing data. React is incredibly popular today and also offers React Native, a framework for building native apps on iOS and Android.

Finally, we chose Auth0 as our authentication provider and as the default for apps backed by 8base. Developers can very easily integrate Auth0 into their apps while still being able to utilize other authentication providers. Auth0 delivers integration with over 30 social and enterprise identity providers, in addition to multi-factor authentication and other powerful features.

Advice for indie hackers

Architect for scale

The "lean startup" approach is often practiced by slapping together a software product so that founders can immediately begin pursuing product-market fit. I encourage founders to consider how much trouble they might find themselves in if their products need to be rewritten once product-market fit is found.

It’s better to build on a solid foundation with the ability to iterate on a product without ever having to sacrifice the ability to scale. We did this at 8base and it’s paying dividends now because we are spending our time incrementally improving our product rather than working on technical upgrades or rewrites, which are essentially invisible to our customers.

Be wary of developers that build products for startups without thinking through the data model

Some of the back ends that exist today allow front-end developers, especially mobile developers, to simply dump data into them without considering any schema or structure. For some apps, that’s fine. For most apps, it’s not. Make sure that you're choosing an unstructured data approach because it’s the right choice, not the easy choice. Otherwise, your data will be as organized and maintainable as spaghetti...when cooked.

If you are a non-technical founder and use an agency to help you, ask them the following eight questions.

Agencies are generally in business to provide professional services for as long as they can. Their incentives do not always align with those of the founder. Some key due-diligence questions should include:

  1. Do you approach software development as a design-first or engineering-first exercise?

  2. Do my early deliverables consist of high-fidelity prototypes, wireframes, or both?

  3. What startups have you helped that achieved product-market fit and became financially sustainable?

  4. How do you architect applications to ensure I never need to rewrite them?

  5. Will I be able to hire developers that aren’t you?

  6. Will my software scale when the time comes?

  7. What happens during the project when we are altering our designs based upon new market information?

  8. What resources will be needed to support our product once it’s built and goes live?

Building tech products is a never-ending journey for an entrepreneur, but table stakes in terms of what will make a venture successful. The early decisions of what, who, and how can make the difference between success and failure. These decisions include who is deciding what the product does, who is designing and building it, and what underlying technologies are utilized.

Sticking the landing on these three decisions gives an entrepreneur a fighting chance. Making a mistake in any of the three can mean delays, added costs, and perhaps failure.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to add comments or reach out to me with questions at [email protected].