7 Lessons from the Fastest-Building SaaS Founders in 2025

✨Hey there, tech stackers! 🚀

🧠 Stack Trends: 7 Lessons from Analyzing Dozens of SaaS Founders' Stacks

Over the past few months, we’ve broken down the stacks of indie hackers, solo founders, AI builders, bootstrappers, and creators shipping everything from $2M ARR SaaS products to newsletters for 90s kids. Now it’s time to zoom out.

What are the patterns? What’s working across all these stacks? And more importantly, what can you apply to your next idea?

Let’s dig into the 7 most consistent themes from the founders we’ve featured so far 👇

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1. 💡 Speed Wins

Whether it’s Steven Cravotta scaling to $44K MRR or Wes Winder shipping AI-first micro SaaS ideas weekly, speed is the new moat. Founders are:

• Using AI-native IDEs like Cursor

• Building full-stack templates with Lovable

• Deploying in minutes via Vercel or Replit

The faster you can test, the faster you can learn. Speed kills analysis paralysis.

2. 🛠️ Tools Are Modular, Not Monolithic

John Rush uses 88 tools to run 24 projects—and intentionally duplicates features across them to serve different clients or products. No one stack fits all.

Lesson? You don’t need the "perfect tool." You need tools that fit the moment. Combine and recombine as you scale.

3. 🤖 AI Is a Co-Founder

Every stack we’ve featured includes AI in some form:

• OpenAI, Claude, Gemini for product features

• Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf for code and ideation

• UIzard and MagicPatterns for AI-assisted UI design

Founders aren’t waiting to become AI experts—they’re integrating AI into their workflow today.

4. 🔁 Focus on Feedback Loops

Top builders don’t launch and vanish. They:

• Track usage with Mixpanel or Posthog

• Monitor feedback via Loom, Kit, or Typeform

• Iterate based on signal, not instinct

Data isn't just for dashboards. It's the engine behind what to fix, drop, or double down on.

5. 🧱 Start with a Lean Core

From Arnaud Belinga (Breakcold) to Grant Stimmel (The '92), the pattern is clear:
Start with a focused stack:

• One CRM

• One outbound channel

• One monetization method

Layer complexity only after product–channel–market fit starts to click.

6. 📦 Founder-Built Products Are a Cheat Code

Several founders are building tools for themselves and using those tools to power their business:

• John Rush uses MarsX, ListingBott, and SeoBOT to grow his other tools

• Steven Cravotta built and used Posted to scale his app installs

Scratch your own itch—and then sell the itch cream.

7. 📣 Building in Public Is a Growth Channel

Wes Winder, Andrew Yeung, Ankur Nagpal, and many others are growing by sharing how they build.

• Threads on tooling

• Screenshots of dashboards

• Real-time wins and fails

The takeaway: You don’t need a massive ad budget. Just share what you’re doing.

🧠 TL;DR – The Emerging SaaS Builder Playbook

This is what modern building looks like: fast, honest, AI-augmented, community-first.

You’re not just stacking tech. You’re stacking momentum.

Always remember,

Explore broadly

Not just SaaS or tech, but multiple disciplines.

Share ideas selflessly

Be willing to share your knowledge. Keep giving and it will come back to you.

Your stack is not going to save you.

You are. So just build.

Go crush it,

Mark

Tech Stacks is human-compiled, edited, and designed.