Startup Diary – June 12, 2024
Started at 9:00 AM with some light debugging (the emotionally draining kind) on Supabase sessions. Still running into token expiry bugs that vanish the moment I try to reproduce them. Classic. Added some verbose logging to try and fingerprint exactly when and why sessions evaporate. It’s like trying to find a ghost using coffee and console.log.
Morning Momentum
At stand-up, we finally agreed on a short-term plan to wrap session management in a backend-agnostic abstraction layer. It’ll slow us down short-term but save us from technical hell later. Trade-offs. The devs are slightly horrified, but also intrigued.
Did a quick dive into existing pluggable auth approaches. Clerk, Auth0, old passport-JS land… nothing feels like a perfect fit. But I’m starting to map what our own abstraction could borrow, steal, or improve. I’m leaning toward designing our own adapter interface — keep it minimal now, plug deeper later.
Unexpected Lunch Wins
Met up with a founder in the dev tools space. Great convo. Similar onboarding challenges. Might co-build a public demo repo that shows our tools working together. Before that, we're thinking a lightweight API doc cross-link. Duct-tape-level integration, but it gets the conversation going.
Product Polish
After lunch, paired with our product designer to rewrite the copy on error states in our sign-up flow. People don’t read — they sense tone. The goal: less robotic, more human. We want the experience to feel like a helpful friend, not an enterprise IT policy manual.
Back to Back: Fundraising & Outreach
Took a follow-up call with one of the seed funds we pitched. They like the modular auth angle – specifically our potential to support multiple backends. They're watching to see how we gain traction. Clear signals, but cautious ones.
Then spent an hour writing outreach emails to dev communities and open source projects. Concentrated on clarity over cleverness. Tailored each one. Used past open rates to sort the list — no more blasting and hoping.
Also heard back from a DevTool provider I reached out to last week. They're down for a potential quickstart integration. Probably an “instant deploy” onboarding flow. Looping in our tech lead to scope next week.
Webinars and Takeaways
Attended a webinar on developer onboarding. Surprisingly insightful. Biggest takeaway: don’t overload users upfront. Let confidence build. “Progressive discovery” is the phrase they used. Sounds marketing-y, but it works. Definitely something we’ll pull into next week’s UX sprint.
Final Wrap
Reviewed the day in Kanban. Still loose threads around:
- Auth abstraction MVP
- Choosing between Firebase or Supabase for the prototyping layer
- Scoping trial co-marketing efforts
Also gave the investor deck another round of visual edits. It’s more readable now. Needs one punchier point on differentiation though.
Signals I’m Watching
- Supabase helps us move fast but hurts long-term flexibility.
- Fundraising vibes are positive… but not quite “write the check” yet.
- Need analytics depth to back up gut feelings from user feedback.
- Seriously considering bringing in a part-time backend contractor.
Big Discovery Today
The surface-level idea of “swappable auth providers” is a total lie. True backend-agnostic auth requires wrapping session logic, handling refresh edge cases, and building adapter parity across providers. It’s architectural. It’s timeline-sensitive. And we have to get it right now, while the codebase is still young.
Real abstraction starts at birth. Not after technical debt has compound interest.
Outlook
Feeling good. No massive wins today, but lots of micro-progress that stacks up. Staying focused on the basics: auth abstraction, growth experiments, UX cleanup. Iterating forward like our lives depend on it — which, well… they kind of do.
