You just raised your pre-seed round. You have 12-18 months of runway and a hypothesis to validate. Every dollar and every week matters. Here is exactly what you need from a technology perspective, and what you should skip.
What You Need on Day One
A landing page that converts. Before you write a line of product code, you need a page that explains your value proposition and captures leads. This validates demand before you invest in building anything. Use your final tech stack (Next.js, not a no-code builder) so the landing page becomes your marketing site later.
Analytics from the start. Install Mixpanel or PostHog before you launch anything. Every visitor, every click, every signup should be tracked. Data-driven decisions start on day one, not after launch.
A domain and professional email. Get yourname.com and set up Google Workspace or similar. Sending investor updates from a gmail.com address undermines credibility.
What You Need for Your MVP
Authentication. Use Clerk, Auth0, or Supabase Auth. Never build this yourself. It is a solved problem with significant security implications.
Your core feature. The one thing that makes your product valuable. Build this custom, build it well, and build nothing else until it works.
Payment processing (if applicable). Stripe. That is the recommendation. Stripe handles subscriptions, invoicing, tax calculation, and PCI compliance so you never have to.
Transactional email. Resend or SendGrid for welcome emails, password resets, and notifications. Set this up early — it takes an afternoon and prevents user confusion.
Error monitoring. Sentry catches errors before your users report them. Free tier is generous enough for an MVP.
What You Do Not Need Yet
A native mobile app. Build a responsive web app first. If mobile is critical, use a PWA or React Native after you have validated the core experience.
Microservices architecture. Start with a monolith. You do not have the traffic, the team size, or the operational complexity that justifies distributed systems.
Kubernetes, Docker Compose, or complex CI/CD. Deploy to Vercel or Railway. Click a button. Your infrastructure should take zero engineering time at this stage.
A custom admin panel. Use Retool or build a simple password-protected page. Investing in admin tooling before you have users is backwards.
Machine learning infrastructure. Unless ML is your core product, use API-based AI services (OpenAI, Anthropic) rather than training and hosting your own models.
The Budget Reality
A pre-seed startup should spend between $100 and $500 per month on infrastructure. If you are spending more, you are over-engineering. Vercel free tier, Supabase free tier, Stripe with no monthly fee, and free-tier monitoring tools cover most MVPs entirely.
Your biggest technology expense should be building the product itself — either your time as a technical founder, or the cost of a development partner. Everything else should be as close to zero as possible until you have revenue.