The Startup Stack

Figma Interface design and prototyping, built for teams working on the same file at once. Design ↗ Paper An HTML/CSS-native canvas built for designing alongside an AI agent, so designs export as real code. AI canvas ↗ Framer Design-to-live-site publishing, useful for the marketing site you don't want to hand-code. Web ↗

Cursor An AI-native code editor that most early teams now write their first commits in. Editor ↗ Claude Code An agentic coding tool that works across the terminal, PRs, and CI on real tasks. Agent ↗ Codex OpenAI's agentic coding tool, often run as a second agent alongside Claude Code. Agent ↗ Bitrig Builds and ships native Swift and SwiftUI apps with AI, straight from the iPhone. iOS ↗ GitHub Version control, code review, and CI — still the default home for the repo. Version control ↗ Linear Issue tracking and roadmapping fast enough that engineers actually keep it open. Issue tracking ↗ Sentry Catches and traces errors in production before customers have to report them. Monitoring ↗ Interfere Finds production bugs, explains the root cause in the actual code, and suggests the fix. Bug fixing ↗ Scalar Turns an OpenAPI spec into interactive docs, an API client, and SDKs that stay in sync with the code. API docs ↗ Knock One API for email, SMS, push, and in-app notifications, instead of wiring up each channel yourself. Notifications ↗ Resend A developer-first email API for transactional mail, product emails, and newsletter or audience lists. Email API ↗ Braintrust Evaluates and monitors LLM outputs so you catch regressions in your prompts before they ship. Evals ↗ Exa A search API built for AI agents, returning clean content to reason over instead of links to parse. Web search ↗ Parallel A web research API built for AI agents to pull real-time, sourced answers at scale. Web search ↗ Inngest Durable background jobs and workflows for your app, without standing up your own queue. Background jobs ↗ Fireworks Fast, low-cost hosted inference for open-source and fine-tuned models. Inference ↗ OpenRouter One API and one bill for routing requests across dozens of different LLMs. Inference ↗

User Interviews Recruits real target users for interviews and studies, so research doesn't start with your own network. Recruiting ↗ Maze Turns a prototype into a testable study, with quant metrics layered on top of user feedback. Prototype testing ↗ Sprig In-product surveys and micro-interviews that reach users inside the live app. In-product ↗ Dovetail A shared repository for research notes, transcripts, and the takeaways behind them. Repository ↗

PostHog Product analytics, session replay, and feature flags in one open-source tool. Product analytics ↗ Amplitude Behavioral analytics for teams who need deeper funnels and retention cuts. Behavioral ↗ BigQuery The warehouse most teams land in once product data outgrows a single database. Warehouse ↗ Mora Answers data questions in plain language, writing the SQL and building the dashboard for you. BI ↗ Snowflake A cloud data warehouse for teams that have outgrown BigQuery or need enterprise-grade scale. Warehouse ↗ Fivetran Pipes data from hundreds of sources into your warehouse, fully managed, no pipelines to maintain. ETL ↗ Airbyte Open-source data pipelines for moving data into your warehouse, with connectors you can self-host. ETL ↗ dbt Turns raw warehouse tables into clean, tested models using plain SQL, cloud or self-hosted. Transformation ↗ Hex Notebook-style analysis and dashboards that a whole team can build on, not just the data team. Analysis ↗ Hightouch Syncs data back out of the warehouse into the sales, support, and marketing tools that need it. Reverse ETL ↗

Vercel Frontend hosting and deploys, with a preview URL for every branch by default. Hosting ↗ Railway Deploys and hosts full-stack apps and databases without hand-rolling your own AWS setup. Hosting ↗ Cloudflare DNS, CDN, and edge compute — Workers and Pages for shipping close to the user. Edge / CDN ↗ Netlify Static site and Jamstack hosting with instant deploys and a preview URL for every branch. Hosting ↗ Render Deploys web services, static sites, and databases straight from a git push, no Terraform required. Hosting ↗ Supabase Postgres, auth, and storage as one backend, without standing up your own servers. Backend ↗ RunPod A GPU cloud built for AI workloads, usually well below hyperscaler prices for the same chips. GPU cloud ↗ AWS The fallback for anything the smaller platforms don't cover yet, at real scale. Cloud ↗ Google Cloud Often kept around for one specific thing, like a GPU tier a team's built their pricing around. Cloud ↗

Mercury Business banking built for startups, with a lighter setup than a traditional bank. Banking ↗ Stripe Payments and billing infrastructure, from the first charge to usage-based pricing. Payments ↗ Ramp Corporate cards and expense management that closes the books faster. Spend ↗ Quanta Real-time bookkeeping, tax filing, and financial reporting for software companies, run in Slack. Accounting ↗

Gusto Payroll and benefits built for a smaller team's first few hires. Payroll ↗

Notion Docs, wikis, and light project tracking in one workspace that scales with the team. Docs ↗ Slack Real-time team chat, still the default nervous system for a remote or hybrid team. Messaging ↗ Granola An AI notetaker that turns meeting audio into clean, shareable notes, with no bot joining the call. Meeting notes ↗

Attio A CRM that builds itself from your team's email and calendar instead of manual data entry. CRM ↗ Monaco An AI-native sales platform that runs outbound and pipeline for you, backed by a white-glove team. Sales ↗ Intercom Customer messaging and support, with AI handling the first line of tickets. Support ↗ Plain A support inbox built for teams who'd rather ship fixes than manage tickets. Support ↗

Canny Collects feature requests and votes, so the roadmap reflects what customers actually asked for. Feedback ↗ Default Turns inbound signups into qualified meetings — forms, scheduling, and routing in one flow. Inbound ↗ Clay Enriches and automates outbound lead lists by chaining dozens of data sources and AI together. Automation ↗ Gumloop A visual builder for AI workflows and automations, without writing the glue code yourself. Automation ↗ Unify Watches intent signals and builds outbound lists and sequences for sales reps automatically. Sales leads ↗ Typefully Writes and schedules posts across X, LinkedIn, Threads, and Bluesky from one composer. Social ↗ Descript Edits video by editing the transcript — cut words or remove filler, and the clip follows. Video editing ↗ CapCut Fast, mobile-friendly editing for short clips and captions, built for social-first video. Video editing ↗

Profound Tracks and shapes how your brand shows up when people ask AI models instead of Google. Visibility ↗ Peec AI Monitors brand visibility and share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI answers. Monitoring ↗ Scrunch AI Audits and optimizes how AI assistants read, cite, and represent your site. Optimization ↗