What framework are you using?

SSO is a solved problem in most frameworks and should be easy to implement quickly.

Rails or Laravel it's quick to implement SSO for various flavors.

TailwindUI you still need some design + UI/UX skills but it works great for web apps.

You must hang in the WordPress community.

You really need to check out Herd (Local) and Forge/Vapor (AWS) you'll never say hard to install again.

With Laravel I can go from 0 to new web app in production in 15 Minutes

I can register a new domain, point name servers to CloudFlare.

Setup my local env with Herd from scratch, build a server with Forge, point A record to server IP. Setup SSL cert with Forge/Let's Encrypt.

Start a new laravel project, use jetstream to setup an app with users, auth, 2FA and a dashboard. Create a new GitHub Repo, deploy my code to the new server through Forge.

Create a new user through the UI, Login with 2FA, view Dashboard.

Give me 30 minutes and I can setup a Load Balancer, multiple app and worker servers.

I only know one dev team using Java and they are on a Federal project.

Every tool/framework has it's place and Java is the best choice for that particular team and lots of enterprises.

You should check out the Laravel ecosystem you'd be very surprised how nice it it is to develop with and all the tools and packages that are polished and ready for production.

Laravel Framework Forge (Server Builds/Management) Envoyer (Zero Downtime Deploys) Vapor (Serverless) A Package for almost everything Auth, 2FA out of the box Reverb (websockets) Scout (full text search) Cashier(subs + payments) Dusk (automated browser testing) Herd (Local dev in a box) Horizon (Redis monitoring) Pennant (feature flags) Pint (code style fixer) Pulse (monitoring/performance dashboard) Prompts(beautiful command line apps) Sanctum (API & mobile app auth) Socialite(social auth) Telescope(debug tool) Spark (SaaS in a box) Ray (Debug tool) Debugbar (Debug tool)

I built a funded startup on Laravel we had two developers and one was the CTO so he had limited dev time. We chose the TALL stack (Tailwind UI, Alpine js, Laravel and Livewire). There is no way we could have built it it out fast enough using Java or .net. We passed extensive security audits as it was a platform used by stategovernments, were SOC-2 compliant and built to scale to 500k+ users per state.

A Laravel developer is easily 10x more productive building an MVP and launching it to production than any other framework.

Everything you need in Laravel is fast, easy and pro.

I'm currently leading a team building SPA with react, it's easily 10x more complex and feels even less responsive than the TALL Stack application.

Sure enterprise is more comfortable with java, .net and react but it's always been that way. How many enterprises were building on Rails?

Every tool/framework as a purpose, move outside your comfort zone you might be surprised what's out there.

Stick with your job as long as possible, there isn't any better bootstrap funding than being employed at a software engineer rate. Sounds like a good transition would be to apply to https://tinyseed.com/

Thanks I had forgotten about tinyseed!

You might already be familiar, but Startups For The Rest Of Us, Start Small Stay Small, and The SaaS Playbook are all succinct resources for the software bootstrapper.

TinySeed only works with B2B companies, and based on your comment history it looks like this would be B2C.

I think your best bet would be trying to raise a pre-seed round if you wanted to bring in outside funding.

One of my friends were in St. Judes in Memphis for cancer treatment. I was there visiting multiple times and would talk to lots of other families whose children were getting treatment and I was stunned by the large percentage who were from New Orleans or Baton Rouge and many with fathers who mentioned they worked at a chemical plant. My friend had stage IV cancer, St. Judes did an amazing job they are still in remission after this initial treatment in the 1990s.

TALL stack (tailwind, alpine js, Laravel, Livewire)

(You could also use Larave + Inertia js + React/Vue)

I think Livewire is way faster to develop in and has less bloat/complexity.

Laravel Jetstream gives you scaffold and auth + 2FA out of the box.

TailwindUI is cut and paste LEGO like components (you'll have to Alpine js some of them but it's quick and easy)

Tons of Laravel packages available to do what you need to do.

Laravel Spark if you want a fast SaaS in a box for connecting to Stripe

Laravel Forge (EC2) or Vapor (Serverless) makes spinning up servers and deployment super easy.

Some of these are paid but you can definitley do it without them but all the paid items have crazy ROI.

Planetscale might be a good fit. DM Sam Lambert on twitter.

https://twitter.com/isamlambert

Use what you know, what you are efficient with, what you like to use.

I would use Laravel

1) Auth

You can create your Laravel app choosing (Vue + Inertia) or (Livewire) and have auth, 2FA and a profile dashboard in a few minutes, with Laravel Socialite package you can quickly add single sign on with Google Auth, GitHub, Octa, dozens of options. Oauth with Laravel Passport.

2) Simple user dashboard with live updates. I prefer Livewire or you can use View + Inertia these would have been installed in the previous step. You can also use Laravel Nova, or Filament to speed things along building a dashboard.

3) Blog I would run this standalone from the app and use Statamic, Next js or just html + tailwind css depending on the complexity

Laravel Ecosystem

Herd - macOS app that makes setting up your local dev environment instant.

Jetstream - Start a new project with auth and team management.

Telescope - debugging and insight UI

Scout - Lightening fast full text search

Echo - WebSockets

Cashier - Stripe and Paddle Subscriptions

Envoyer - Zero Down Time Deployments

Forge - Server creation and management (EC2)

Vapor - Serverless Creation and management

Horizon - Redis Queue Monitoring

Pennant - feature flags

Sail - Local Docker

Socialite - Social Auth Google, Facebook, GitHub (tons of drivers)

Sanctum - API and mobile auth

Pint - Code style fixer

Dusk - Automated browser testing

Inertia - SPA with server side routing

Livewire - Dynamic server side apps. (Similar to Rails/Hotwire)

And those are just some of the first party packages and tools.

There are well maintained Laravel packages for almost everything else you need.

And working with Laravel is the best developer experience.

"Use what you know" is, in my opinion, the best answer. If you're starting a startup, why would you hinder yourself with the struggle of learning new a new stack (and, worse, a new language!) with all the other things you have to do to get traction and product market fit?