Founders are usually deciding three things at once: what the first version must do, what to build it with, and how much of it to buy. These are the positions we argue for in our own product work and in client engagements.
A first version needs to complete one job end to end, including the unglamorous parts: accounts, permissions, error states, exports and password recovery. A demonstration that a stranger cannot operate is not a minimum viable product, it is a prototype.
Novel technology is cheap to start and expensive to staff. We default to widely-understood tools for everything that is not your differentiator, and spend the innovation budget only where it earns money. The exception is a genuine technical advantage — that is worth the hiring difficulty.
Authentication, payments, email and file storage are almost always bought. Your pricing model, matching logic and operational workflow are usually built. Everything in between deserves an explicit decision with a reason recorded, rather than a default inherited by accident.
Shortcuts are acceptable when they are written down and scheduled. The failure mode is not the shortcut itself, it is the one nobody recorded, which the next engineer discovers by shipping a bug.
Tell us what you run today and we will tell you what we would change, and whether it is worth changing.