The biggest waste of a founder's first month is performance optimization for a load that does not exist. You do not have users yet. You have a feature to prove. The backend you need is the smallest one that handles ten people clicking buttons without falling over.
Speed comes from cutting work, not from clever code. Lean on the API that ships with your database. Add custom logic only where the platform genuinely cannot do it for you.
Map every action a user takes to one endpoint. CRUD covers most of it: create, read, update, delete. Sketch the flow before you write code.
Then build, in order:
- The endpoint that creates the main entity.
- The endpoint that lists or reads it.
- Update and delete, only if your core flow needs them this week.
Test each one with Postman, Insomnia, or curl before you touch the frontend. If you cannot make the round trip from a terminal, the frontend will not save you. If you are on Supabase, the auto-generated APIs cover most of this — drop into Edge Functions only when a request needs custom logic the database cannot express.
Bad: writing a job queue, a cache layer, and rate limiting before a single user signs up.
Good: POST /entries, GET /entries, returns JSON, ships today.
Bad: building one giant /api/do-everything endpoint with a type parameter.
Good: one endpoint per resource, plain HTTP verbs, predictable shape.
- Optimizing for traffic you do not have. Make it correct. Make it fast next quarter.
- Custom backends when your database tool already exposes a working API.
- Skipping endpoint tests because "I will catch it in the UI." You will not.
Build the CRUD endpoints your core feature needs and confirm each one round-trips data through Postman or curl.
Every endpoint your one core feature requires is live, tested directly against the API, and returning the right data from the database you stood up in data model live.
The biggest waste of a founder's first month is performance optimization for a load that does not exist. You do not have users yet. You have a feature to prove. The backend you need is the smallest one that handles ten people clicking buttons without falling over.
Speed comes from cutting work, not from clever code. Lean on the API that ships with your database. Add custom logic only where the platform genuinely cannot do it for you.
Map every action a user takes to one endpoint. CRUD covers most of it: create, read, update, delete. Sketch the flow before you write code.
Then build, in order:
- The endpoint that creates the main entity.
- The endpoint that lists or reads it.
- Update and delete, only if your core flow needs them this week.
Test each one with Postman, Insomnia, or curl before you touch the frontend. If you cannot make the round trip from a terminal, the frontend will not save you. If you are on Supabase, the auto-generated APIs cover most of this — drop into Edge Functions only when a request needs custom logic the database cannot express.
Bad: writing a job queue, a cache layer, and rate limiting before a single user signs up.
Good: POST /entries, GET /entries, returns JSON, ships today.
Bad: building one giant /api/do-everything endpoint with a type parameter.
Good: one endpoint per resource, plain HTTP verbs, predictable shape.
- Optimizing for traffic you do not have. Make it correct. Make it fast next quarter.
- Custom backends when your database tool already exposes a working API.
- Skipping endpoint tests because "I will catch it in the UI." You will not.
Build the CRUD endpoints your core feature needs and confirm each one round-trips data through Postman or curl.
Every endpoint your one core feature requires is live, tested directly against the API, and returning the right data from the database you stood up in data model live.