How to Choose a Tech Stack

Short Answer

There is no universal “best tech stack.” The right choice depends on your product’s goals, platform needs, team expertise, compliance requirements, and growth plans. Aim to balance speed of execution with long term maintainability, and be intentional about which parts of your stack you build versus buy. TBL helps founders evaluate these tradeoffs and select technologies that support their product vision now and at scale.

Start With the Product

One of the most important early tech stack decisions is choosing between web, mobile, or both. At TBL, we help founders make this decision by focusing first on the core user persona: who they are, where they will be using your product, and what they need to accomplish. The right platform choice unlocks better user experience, faster development, and stronger alignment with your go to market motion.

If your users are in the field, such as delivery drivers, sales reps, or service technicians, they are likely operating on the go with short, focused sessions. In these cases, a mobile app may be the most natural interface. Conversely, if users are analyzing large datasets, managing complex workflows, or working from a desk, a web based platform often makes more sense.

Web also offers more flexibility during development. You can push changes anytime without waiting for app store approval. Native mobile apps, by contrast, typically require manual review and approval from Apple or Google before releases go live. While some frameworks offer over the air updates, these come with limitations and tradeoffs that we will cover in another article.

Your platform decision also has business implications. On iOS, Apple takes a percentage of in app purchases, which can impact margins. Web based products typically only incur payment processing fees, giving you more control over revenue. At TBL, we guide startups through these tradeoffs to ensure their tech stack supports their product goals, user needs, and business model.

Understand Compliance and Hosting Needs

Before writing code, founders should understand what regulations apply to their product and users. Compliance requirements can shape your infrastructure, stack, and timeline, so it is critical to get ahead of them early.

• HIPAA for handling sensitive healthcare data
• SOC 2 for demonstrating secure data practices, often required by enterprise buyers
• COPPA for products that collect data from children under 13
• PCI for securely processing credit card payments
• GDPR for protecting user data and privacy for customers in the EU

Each of these frameworks may influence how you store data, what kind of logging and monitoring you need, how infrastructure is secured, and even which regions you can deploy to. These are not just box checking exercises. They directly impact your technical stack and development workflows.

For example, choosing between a managed platform like Heroku and a cloud provider like AWS often comes down to tradeoffs in flexibility, compliance, and cost. Heroku can get you to market faster with opinionated defaults and a smooth developer experience but may hit limitations as compliance needs grow or traffic patterns become more complex. AWS or GCP offer more control and scalability, but also require more configuration and operational effort up front.

At TBL, we help startups weigh these choices based on real business needs, not just technical preferences. Sometimes it is better to buy back time with Heroku, especially during MVP development. Other times, the long term benefit of investing in AWS with Terraform and stricter security controls outweighs the initial setup cost.

Build vs Buy

Early stage teams should absolutely outsource solved problems. Buying tools for common infrastructure needs allows your engineers to focus on what matters most: building differentiated value. Instead of spending weeks wiring up email delivery or managing logs, your team can direct its energy toward the features that make your product unique.

Examples of commonly outsourced systems include email and SMS delivery, user authentication, payment processing, KYC, bank account linking, analytics, and error logging. The market is full of mature, battle tested solutions in each category including Twilio, SendGrid, Stripe, Plaid, Segment, Auth0, and others. These tools dramatically reduce time to market and help maintain focus, but they come at a higher fixed cost and introduce dependency tradeoffs.

Where TBL recommends caution is when a third party tool sits too close to your product’s core functionality. If the tool limits your roadmap, pricing becomes unpredictable, or the vendor roadmap diverges from your needs, it can become a bottleneck rather than a boost.

TBL’s approach is to delegate the basics early, then revisit those decisions as the business scales. We have helped startups transition off third party vendors in areas like email, payments, and infrastructure once there was a clear business case to reduce cost or increase control.

Infrastructure Strategy

Infrastructure is one of the most flexible and opinionated parts of your tech stack. There is no single right answer, only tradeoffs based on your team, your product, and your timeline. From on premises servers to fully managed platforms, startups today have more choice than ever in how they host, deploy, and scale.

In the early stages, speed and simplicity matter. If your goal is to get something live quickly and validate product market fit, a platform like Heroku can be a great choice. Later, when scale and cost efficiency become more critical, you might migrate to AWS, GCP, or Azure.

At TBL, we most often recommend AWS for its robust ecosystem. Tools like Cognito, EC2, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, and Route 53 offer a modular foundation. Startup credits can also significantly offset upfront costs.

The goal is not to overengineer or future proof everything on day one. It is to make intentional decisions that balance speed with flexibility. TBL helps startups get to market fast without cornering themselves later.

Database Choice

For most startups, a relational SQL database like Postgres or MySQL will be the right choice. These systems use structured schemas and are optimized for consistent query performance, making them reliable and well supported.

NoSQL databases like MongoDB or DynamoDB offer more flexibility with schema design but come with tradeoffs in consistency and performance.

TBL recommends SQL for most early stage use cases. Tools like Postgres even support JSON fields, giving you flexibility without sacrificing structure.

Match to Your Team

When speed and iteration matter, technical familiarity is more important than chasing the trendiest stack. Familiar stacks reduce bugs, speed up onboarding, and enable faster execution.

While most senior engineers can learn new tools, the ramp up time adds risk. TBL recommends sticking to mature, well documented tech until the product is validated.

We have seen teams evolve their stack as needs change. Founders should also consider hiring implications: obscure tech choices can drastically reduce available talent.

Common Stack Examples

• Web plus Mobile (shared codebase): Ruby on Rails with Hotwire offers unified backend and mobile compatible views with reduced complexity.
• Mobile First (cross platform): React Native with Node.js and TypeScript supports shared code across platforms with fast iteration.
• Native Mobile (performance critical): Swift for iOS or Kotlin for Android offers full control and best-in-class performance for native apps.

TBL helps startups align these choices with product strategy, team capabilities, and long term flexibility.

How TBL Helps

Choosing your tech stack is not a one size fits all decision. At TBL, we start with the platform needs and dig into business specific constraints, priorities, and differentiators.

We also account for VC incentives, hiring implications, and the full arc from MVP to Series A and beyond. We encourage documentation of early decisions and help teams evaluate tradeoffs throughout.

TBL supports startups at every stage from first hire to scaling infrastructure. We have seen the common pitfalls and know how to avoid them.

Conclusion

Your tech stack is more than tools. It is the foundation of your product strategy. The right choices help you move faster and stay focused on the real problem. The wrong ones slow you down and burn resources.

TBL helps startups make intentional, scalable decisions that match their stage and ambition. Whether you are validating an idea or preparing to scale, we provide the technical guidance to help you build confidently.