Ask HN: SaaS startup hired me as their first programmer, help?

3 points by hackeronezero ↗ HN
I graduated this year and SaaS startup founders hired me to build their project.

They offered me 1/3 of the market salary and 6% of the startup as equity.

I believe in the project idea. I think it's worth gambling on it.

Founders told me the startup should be unhackable. So, I think this implies that we should not create any backend and entirely base our app on APIs supplied by existing product companies who have better security track record than me.

Do you know what companies provide user account management, auth management, subscription management who have a good track record in this industry.

What else do you suggest?

I've already coded the MVP in Go and React last week.

I am having hard time implementing user accounts, subscriptions, auth in secure way.

We don't have devops/sysadmins, so i am responsible for all servers to.

I've been thinking if it's worth having any database (for user accounts, subscription) because then i will be responsible for backups/recovery etc...

Since, I am the only programmer of the startup for now, I think best would be to let some other company store accounts, subscriptions, etc..

The core app database is DynamoDB, so it's responsible for its backup and recovery.

2 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 15.7 ms ] thread
There are a number of services that offer user management:

https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/ https://auth0.com/

You just need to provide a hook on the app/website to authenticate.

Not sure if you can completely get away from doing any kind of database. I bet you'll need to store some kind of user state. Again, try amazon dynamodb, or their Postgresql alternative, all cloud hosted with backups.

Now some comments:

- Founders demanding "unhackable" implementation. Be clear, explain you'll do your best to ensure that is the case, but even large companies with 1,000s of developers and security professionals are still getting hacked. Explain there is no way you can provide a guarantee (so that later it does not become reason for dismissal or something like that). And whoever will guarantee unhackable solution is simply lying.

- If I understand correctly, there are 2 founders (idea people), and you are the first programmer. If that is the case, you are the sole person responsible for implementation, design, support, hardware, deployment, networking.. and other stuff. And you got 6% of equity... I would question that.

Good luck

Just keep looking for a real job. You and your “founders” are both clearly in over your heads...