Phase one SaaS foundation for a B2B operations product
A B2B operations product needed a first public cut: real onboarding, role boundaries, and a shell that could accept billing later without a rewrite.
Next.jsSupabaseAuth.jsTypeScriptTailwind CSS
Client challenge
The team had UI prototypes but no durable tenancy model. Demo accounts shared data accidentally. Content edits required developer deploys. Subscription thinking was postponed until it became a blocker for paid pilots.
Constraints
• Private beta within a fixed window
• Single region deploy acceptable
• Billing could stub; tenancy could not
• Founders needed to edit marketing and help content themselves
Engineering decisions
Tenant id on every query path
Membership and tenant scoping were enforced in data access helpers—not left to individual pages to remember.
Separate marketing, app, and admin route groups
Clear boundaries reduced the chance of leaking admin tools into customer sessions.
Billing seam without billing UI
Customer and plan fields exist. Checkout waits. The schema does not pretend money is handled when it is not.
Architecture
Next.js + TypeScript. Supabase/Postgres for persistence. Auth.js for sessions. Structured homepage/blog/project content for the marketing surface. Feature flags gate incomplete modules.
Implementation
Phase one delivered invite-based onboarding, role-aware app shell, core operational workflow, and content editing for public pages. We documented how to add billing and reporting modules against the existing tenant model.
Tradeoffs
• Skipped multi-region and advanced SSO
• Used a pragmatic admin rather than a full internal tooling suite
• Accepted stubbed metering events for later analytics
Lessons learned
• Tenancy mistakes are expensive to unwind—do them early
• Content ownership unblocks marketing without blocking engineering
• A written list of non-goals keeps demos honest
Outcome
The team ran real onboarding demos on a system with proper boundaries. Later billing and reporting work has a place to land. Operators know which surfaces are customer-facing versus internal.
Future improvements
Stripe checkout, usage reporting, and finer admin roles are natural phase-two items on the existing foundation.
