The Tech Stack That Powers My Business (2024)

I felt inspired to open the books on my tech stack after reading how Alex Lieberman runs storyarb.

It’s good exercise. Not only for transparency, but as an excuse to review the mechanics (often hidden) powering my business.

For those unaware, Tetheros is a software platform that simplifies project delivery by connecting diverse workstreams and goals so you can improve alignment and accountability on your team.

View the Sheet here. 

Let’s dive in.

Content Management

Tetheros is a SPA with a blog component. This means the site is rendered with Javascript which is awesome for performance but questionable for search engine discovery on the blog side of things.

My content stack has a few things to avoid SEO prison:

Product documentation is hosted with a simple React application running Docusaurus.

CRM

I’m extremely simple when it comes to this. I manage contacts with a combination of Google Sheets and Tetheros Pro.

Sheets provides an easy way to store contacts. I put all important follow-ups and dates in Tetheros Pro in a dedicated workstream called Customer Success.

When there are too many moving parts this workload will move into Hubspot.

Email Newsletter

Subscribers to my personal brand (join if you haven’t already) and Tetheros are managed with ConvertKit.

Founder Nathan Barry is absolutely crushing it in this space while also elevating the entire entrepreneurship game through his thoughtful content and brand management.

Finances

Here’s an area I’m not terribly proud of: everything finance is handled with Google Sheets.

Before you ask: yes, it sucks. It’s on my To Do list to handle better.

Content Editing

I’ve been around the bend with a lot of tools and finally stopped for rest after landing on the Adobe Creative Suite.

Sure, it’s expensive and they’re the big guys but Adobe is the industry leader for a reason. While the subscription is annoying to those of us who grew up without it, it’s an investment well made at the end of the day. My top tools from the suite:

Their AI integrations are done really well too.

Sales Prospecting

Recently switched to Apollo.io (from manually gathering information out on the digital streets).

Good team behind this product. Incredible UI/UX for the industry. Always excited to get an email that my contacts are ready for download.

Outbound Email

I thoughtfully construct cold email campaigns for extremely specific people using Instantly.

I’m not a fan of cold email, but Instantly makes organizing, measuring, and building campaigns a breeze.

Database

Tetheros is mostly managed with MongoDB Atlas.

I learned everything I could about this technology when I launched the business two years ago and haven’t looked back. Love almost everything about it and I typically don’t enjoy database work that much.

Application Architecture

Built on the MERN stack, Tetheros is midway through a microservice architecture overhaul, but mostly built as:

And traffic is secured and routed using Nginx (now owned by F5).

Strategic Framework

After reading Measure What Matters by John Doerr I adopted OKRs as a way of life.

I’m not (that) weird, but the way this framework applies SMART goals to outcomes played a large role in the design of Tetheros.

UI/UX Design

We partner with the marvelous Mortensen Designs, led by Olivia Mortensen.

Mortensen Designs has masterfully solved interesting problems for us without losing sight of the details or the big picture.

Payments

Stripe. That’s the whole sentence.

Process Automation

While I’d love to say we run things with Zapier (one day), much of our processes are automated with home grown scripts. Some of these are hosted as AWS Lambda serverless functions (which technically aren’t “hosted” I suppose)

Personal Productivity

I use Alarmy for keeping me accountable to a productive morning schedule.

All my meeting minutes live in my Remarkable 2. While the device is a bit expensive, the sweet charm of good organization and simplicity have made it a worthwhile investment.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m also obsessed with whiteboards. There’s no better way to run a brainstorming session or keep my niece occupied for a few minutes.

Project Management

Hands down Tetheros Pro.

Nothing in the entire universe does a better job at managing tasks, strategic planning, and communication in one place.

I’m biased, but also I’m correct.