What are you building, and what does your stack look like?
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I am a Computer Science student doing research into how solopreneurs and small startups create new apps and what their stack looks like. Particularly, I'm interested in how you handle things like authentication, billing, and permissions/authorization in your apps.
Let me know what you're working on below and how you're going about it -- I'd love to connect for some quick calls to learn about your product and talk about your process in building it!
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Hi, currently building CogniFocus, a focus app with a Goblin that catches you opening TikTok mid-session and interrupts distractions instead of just tracking time.
The core idea is behavioral accountability. If you open TikTok or Instagram mid-session, the Goblin reacts immediately before “just one scroll” turns into an hour and blocks the apps
Stack is mainly Ionic + Capacitor, Firebase/Firestore for backend + auth/data, and RevenueCat for billing/subscriptions and firebase analytics. A lot of the work honestly went into behavioral UX and Android-side interruption systems rather than traditional CRUD/backend work.
CS student doing real research, love it. Solo builder here, won't say much about the product yet but happy to talk shop on the plumbing.
Quick version of what I'd tell my past self:
Auth - Supabase, Clerk, Auth0, pick one. An afternoon of setup vs. days of building it badly. I tried the days version first, do not recommend.
Permissions - this is the sneaky one. Most people check "can this user see this?" in their app code. Way better to push the rule into the database itself, so even a buggy API can't leak data. If you Google "Postgres row-level security" you'll find the rabbit hole.
Billing - Stripe, but specifically their hosted checkout and customer portal. You're not building a payment form. You're not building a "cancel my plan" page. You're listening for webhook events and updating a row in your database.
The thread connecting all three: anything that's been solved a thousand times already, let someone else solve it. Spend your hours on the part of the product that's actually yours.
DM me if a call would help.