Building a product with a shoestring budget. Here's how it's going.

I've always wanted to build something of my own, take it from an idea to a working product, and learn what it actually takes to ship software beyond local development.

So that's what I've been doing.

I'm a full-stack developer, and lately, a big part of my time has gone into building the application itself, setting up the backend, integrating authentication, configuring the database, and getting everything deployed.

But there's one challenge I keep running into that has very little to do with writing code: money.

I'd love to rent a VPS, get a custom domain, and have a proper production setup that I can fully control. The reality, though, is that I don't have the budget for those things right now.

And waiting until I have the money to build the setup I'd ideally want doesn't seem like a particularly productive strategy.

So I've decided to work with what I have.

For now, I'm using FastAPI Cloud for the backend, Supabase for the database, and Vercel for the frontend. It isn't my dream infrastructure setup, but it lets me keep moving forward without spending money I don't have.

The project I'm building is called Build and Push.

Getting it from local development to production has been a journey in itself. Between Google OAuth, environment variables, database configuration, deployment issues, and security considerations, there's always something new to figure out.

I've learned that writing the code is only one part of building a product. Making all the pieces work together reliably is an entirely different challenge.

I'm still working through the rough edges, improving the setup, and figuring things out as I go.

I wanted to share this here because I imagine there are plenty of people in this community building products without funding, a team, or a big budget. Sometimes it feels like you need everything in place before you can launch anything.

I'm trying to take a different approach: start with what's available, get something working, and improve it over time.

For now, the goal is simple: keep building, get the product into people's hands, and learn from the experience.

If you've built something with limited resources, I'd love to hear about your experience. What did you use to get started, and what would you do differently today?

Here's to building before everything is perfect.