❦ STACK GUIDE · No. 006 · By founder stage
Side-project founder
Still has the 9-to-5. Building nights and weekends. Time, not money, is the constraint.
You have a day job that pays the bills. You build in the margins — evenings, weekends, lunch breaks. The money would let you pay for tools, but every dollar adds pressure to quit. The real constraint is the 6-10 hours a week you actually get. This stack is built for time-budget, not money-budget.
❦ The stack, at a glance
$0–100
7
12
$0–100/mo
Who this is for
- ●Building alongside a full-time job
- ●Constraint is hours, not dollars
- ●Pre-revenue or just barely past it
Who it isn't for
- ●Anyone full-time on the project — see First-time founder or Vibe coder
- ●Anyone past $10k MRR — your stack needs the upgrade
❦ Hosting — zero-config wins
You don't have time to debug deploys. Pick the platform that just works.
❦ Database — zero setup
❦ Payments
No setup cost — only pay when customers pay you. Critical when revenue is uncertain.
❦ Project management — solo cadence
❦ Marketing — newsletter as distribution
A weekly build-in-public note is the highest-ROI marketing for a side-project founder.
❦ Banking — free, separate
❦ Accounting — free until $100k
❦ A note from the editors
Budget target: $0–100/mo, often closer to $0. The constraint isn't money — it's the 6-10 weekend hours you get. Pick tools that don't have setup overhead. Skip incorporation until revenue or co-founder pressure forces it. Be honest about whether the side project is worth the relationship cost of nights and weekends.
❦ Your stage
See another stage.
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