Building a Unicorn-Wannabe Startup as a Solo Developer

Starting a tech company is a dream for many, but building a unicorn-wannabe startup as a solo developer? That’s a unique challenge I’ve decided to take on. In this post—a teaser for a series of blog posts—I’ll share an overview of my journey, the stack I’ve chosen, and the decisions I’ve made along the way. Stay tuned for detailed breakdowns in future posts.

The Vision

The idea for my startup came from a simple realization: in the world of "doing everything online," people have forgotten about offline activities. These are especially important for kids. I realized that there is no convenient, centralized way to organize birthday parties. Venues that organize parties have to advertise on their own and rely on being found by search engines. Planning a schedule is challenging and often managed with Excel or Google Calendar. Communication with parents of invited kids is another challenge—from confirming attendance to handling fragile data like food allergies. The potential to create a scalable, impactful solution to address these issues was too exciting to ignore. Armed with nothing but my laptop, caffeine, and a big dream, I set out to build this from scratch.

The Stack - big picture

Choosing the right tech stack as a solo developer is critical. It’s about finding the balance between scalability, development speed, and maintainability. Here’s what I’ve chosen:

Backend

Framework: Spring Boot – A robust and feature-rich framework that supports rapid development and scalability.

Architecture: Hexagonal Architecture – Keeps the core business logic independent from external systems.

Structure: Modular Monolith – Ensures maintainability and allows for future scalability.

Approach: API First – Designing APIs before implementation ensures clear communication and adaptability.

Hosting: OVH Public Cloud – Hosted in Warsaw to simplify GDPR compliance, as Poland is the first market.

Frontend

Approach: Headless Frontends – Allows decoupling of backend and frontend, making the system more flexible.

DevOps

Containerization: Ensures consistency between development and production.

CI/CD: Atlassian Tools – Leveraging free offerings for startups under 10 people for documentation, CI/CD, task management, and planning.

Monitoring: Prometheus and Grafana – Essential for keeping an eye on application health.

Planning for Growth

All my technical decisions are made with growth in mind. At some point, I plan to expand the team, so the system must be easy to understand and onboard new developers. I’m treating the project as if it were already being developed by a team to prepare for this transition. I’m even considering stepping away as a developer eventually to focus more on the business side.

What’s Next?

This is just the beginning. Over the next posts, I’ll dive deeper into each aspect of this project, including:

• How to plan functionalities and be ready for a change?
• How and why I chose Spring Boot and the Hexagonal Architecture.
• Do you have to always choose between good and fast?
• My experience with an API-first approach.
• What about QA?
• Did I have time for test automation?
• Did AI was useful and how much it increased my productivity?

Whether this startup becomes the next unicorn or not, the journey is bound to be packed with insights and lessons. If you’re intrigued, stay tuned for the upcoming posts in this series!

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