Why I built icanbefitter.com from scratch with Next.js and Supabase instead of using Substack — ownership, AI pipeline, and legacy.
Everyone told me to use Substack. Or Ghost. Or Medium. Or WordPress with a theme. You are not a frontend developer, they said. Focus on writing, they said. Use a platform and stop reinventing the wheel.
I listened to all of that advice. Then I ignored it and built icanbefitter.com from scratch using Next.js, Supabase, and Tailwind CSS. Deployed on Vercel. Custom everything. My code. My database. My rules.
That decision took 10x longer than signing up for Substack would have. And it was the single best decision I made for this project. Here is why.
The Rented Land Problem
When you build your brand on Substack, you are building on rented land. Substack owns the platform. Substack controls the algorithm. Substack decides what features you get, what your page looks like, and what percentage of your revenue they take.
Right now, Substack is popular and generous. But I have watched this movie before. Blogger was popular. Then Google killed it. Medium was the future of writing. Then they paywalled everything and creators lost their audiences. Tumblr was a thriving ecosystem. Then it was sold for a dollar. Every platform follows the same lifecycle: attract creators, build audience, monetize the audience, squeeze the creators.
I cannot afford that risk. icanbefitter.com is not a side project I will abandon in six months. It is a legacy platform that needs to work in 18 years when Avyaansh is old enough to inherit it. If Substack shuts down in 2030, my 18-year plan is destroyed. If my own website has a problem, I fix it myself.
Ownership is not optional when you are building for the long term. It is the foundation.
Most personal brands are built on rented land. When the landlord changes the rules, the brand disappears. I will not build my son's inheritance on someone else's platform.
The Architecture: Why Each Choice
Every technology in my stack was chosen by asking one question: will this still work in 10 years?
Next.js 14 (App Router) — React is the most widely adopted frontend framework in the world. It is not going anywhere. Next.js adds server-side rendering, which means fast page loads and excellent SEO. The App Router with server components by default means most of my pages load without sending JavaScript to the browser. Fast. Simple. Future-proof.
Supabase (PostgreSQL) — Supabase gives me a full PostgreSQL database with authentication, storage, and real-time capabilities. But the key word is PostgreSQL. If Supabase the company disappears tomorrow, my data is in standard Postgres format. I can migrate to any hosting provider in the world. No vendor lock-in. No proprietary data format. Just SQL.
Tailwind CSS — utility-first CSS that lives in the HTML. No separate stylesheet files to maintain. No CSS naming conventions to argue about. The entire design system is expressed in class names that any developer can read. Five years from now, a developer looking at my code will understand exactly what each element looks like without opening a single CSS file.
Vercel — deploys from GitHub automatically. Push code, site updates. No servers to manage. No DevOps to worry about. Vercel handles scaling, CDN, SSL, and everything else that used to require a dedicated operations team. I push code and the site is live globally in under a minute.
This stack is not trendy. It is boring and reliable. Every piece is backed by large companies or massive open-source communities. Nothing in this stack will be abandoned next year. That is the point.