The Zero-to-Launch Stack I Use in 2024
What I reach for when a client says 'we need an MVP in 6 weeks.'
Same client request comes up multiple times a year. Here's the stack I use for fast, defensible MVPs.
Founders ask me regularly: "if I want to ship in 6 weeks, what stack should I use?"
Here's my 2024 answer.
The default
- Next.js 15 (App Router, Server Components)
- Postgres (Neon for managed)
- Drizzle ORM (or Prisma if your team prefers)
- Clerk for auth
- Stripe for payments (if relevant)
- Vercel for hosting
- Resend for transactional email
- Sentry for errors
- PostHog for analytics
Why these
- Each one is a managed service with a generous free tier. Total infra cost for an MVP: <$50/month.
- Every component has obvious docs and a large community. Onboarding new engineers is fast.
- Boring tech. None of these will be deprecated in 18 months.
- Vercel + Next means deployment is git push. Engineers focus on code.
Variants
If you need a mobile app: Add Expo + React Native. Reuse logic between web and mobile via a shared package.
If you need real-time: Add Pusher or Liveblocks. Don't build it from scratch.
If you need AI features: Anthropic API. Maybe Pinecone if you need RAG.
If you need search: Postgres full-text first, Algolia or Typesense if Postgres isn't enough.
If you're regulated: Use AWS, terraform everything, and add a few weeks for compliance scaffolding.
What I avoid in MVPs
- Custom auth (use Clerk)
- Custom queue infra (use Postgres SKIP LOCKED or QStash)
- Self-hosted anything (until you have a person to run it)
- Microservices (one app, modular structure)
- Complex deploy pipelines (git push to Vercel)
The 6-week breakdown
- Week 1: scaffold (auth, payments, marketing site, dashboard skeleton)
- Week 2-3: core feature 1
- Week 4-5: core feature 2 + polish
- Week 6: launch prep, monitoring, on-call setup
This timeline holds for ~80% of B2B SaaS MVPs. Consumer apps are harder; AI-native products are different (depends a lot on the model integration).
When to deviate
- If your product is fundamentally novel architecture (real-time multiplayer, on-device AI), the stack matters less than the bespoke parts. Get help.
- If you're enterprise-grade from day one, the stack scales. Use the same stack; just allocate more weeks.
The stack isn't magic. Discipline is. Pick boring tech, ship fast, iterate.