Baseplate Launch Checklist

This section provides a working draft of all the steps that are required to create and launch a company that leverages the Baseplate framework.  We’re including all the steps - not just those related to development - so that you have full insight into all the different things that go into launching a business focused SaaS company.   As we go if we have ideas on ways we can accelerate, automate or increase the efficacy of steps in this process, by all means, lets talk about it!

The goal of the process is to ensure that the final business built using the Baseplate framework is set up and deployed in a standardized and efficient manner.  This is intentionally a larger aperture than simply the stock applications code as the success of the business is ultimately the goal.

Basic Corporate Stuff

  • Legal Incorporation / LLC Formation - Clerky
  • EIN Registration - Clerky
  • Finance
    • Accounting Software - Quickbooks Online
    • Checking Account - Wells Fargo (Requires EIN)
    • Credit Card - Wells Fargo (Requires EIN)
  • Contractor Support - Upwork

Website

  • Domain Name - NameCheap
  • E-mail, Documents, Files - Google Workspace
  • Phone Number - Google Voice
  • Website CMS - Hubspot CMS
  • Payments - Hubspot Commerce
  • Chat - Hubspot Chat
  • Integration - Quickbooks <> Hubspot Integration

Website Notes

  • No Stripe?  We initially used Stripe for payments because, well, everyone uses Stripe.   That allowed us to quickly spin up payment sites for customers.  As we've developed this a little further, though, we've chose to simplify to Hubspot Payments versus utilizing a separate payment system.   For the needs of most early stage companies we think the functionality provided by HubSpot is more than sufficient and reduces our system count by one. 
  • What about Wordpress? - Yes, the world uses Wordpress as it's CMS.  Yes, it might be more widely used than the HubSpot CMS.   That noted the HubSpot CMS is natively integrated with our CRM and MORE than sufficient to meet our needs.   So the simplicity of having a single system trumps the flexibility of a separate system. 

Visual Design Process (Marketing Assets)

  • Visual Identity System
    • Logo - A logo delivered in various different formats for print and digital
    • Color Palette - Primary and secondary brand colors with their corresponding color codes (HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone) and usage guidelines.
    • Typography - Defined fonts for headlines, body copy, and specific elements, along with sizing, weight, and hierarchy rules.
    • Imagery - Guidelines for the type, style, and tone of imagery to be used (e.g., realistic, illustrative, abstract, bright, muted), including examples of acceptable and unacceptable images.
    • Iconography - A consistent set of icons and guidelines for their design and usage.   In my experience this is "nice to have" for marketing assets but a requirement for an application.   In this case, though, we'll use the out of the box Baseplate visual identity for the application. 
  • Style Guide - A guide covering written content produced by the company.
  • Website Design
    • Sitemap: A hierarchical structure of all website pages.  
    • Mockups (High-Fidelity Designs): Pixel-perfect visual designs of key website pages, showing the final look and feel, including colors, typography, imagery, and interactive elements.
      • Typically this covers the primary templates of the site versus being developed for each and every web page of the site.   Examples include article pages, contact us pages, pricing pages, blog post pages, etc.
      • Most often this will be delivered in Figma but can be delivered in other visual design tools
      • If you plan to extensively integrate your site with either your app or CRM you'll want to define this in both prose (written requirements) and high fidelity mockups
      • Note that historically, interactive prototypes, were sometimes provided as separate from mockups.   While we do this as a best practice with Storybook stories in application development it's often overkill for most web pages.
    • Design System Specification: If the site provided more extensive interactive functionality it may leverage a library of reusable UI components (buttons, forms, navigation elements, cards, etc.) typically from a given UI design framework (example: React).   We typically don't see this in web pages and not it here for completeness.
    • Responsive Design Specifications: Designs and guidelines for how the website will adapt and display across various devices (desktop, tablet, mobile).
    • Asset Library: Optimized images, videos, and other multimedia assets ready for web implementation.
  • Corporate Collateral - Core sales and marketing materials that embody the visual brand.
    • Sales Deck - Professionally designed Google Slides template for sales presentation
    • Investor Deck - Profession designed Google Slides template for investor pitches
      • While not strictly required our general point of view is that if you're going through the trouble of having a lot of collateral built out you should get a professional investor deck built out at the same time.
    • Product Sheets - One or two page PDF detailing product features, benefits, and use cases.
    • White Paper / eBook Templates - Design template(s) for longer-form content, ensuring a professional and readable layout.
    • Email Marketing Templates: Branded templates for various email campaigns (newsletters, promotional emails, transactional emails).
      • Note: We generally recommend text only e-mail for outbound so designed e-mails are limited to system messages and current customers.
    • Social Media Templates & Graphics: Reusable templates for social media posts (e.g., quote graphics, announcement templates, event promotion).
      • Note: Build out the specifics of our social media endpoints is another guide so consider this a high level group that you'll need to develop in more depth.
    • Letterhead / Document Templates: Branded stationery for official communications and reports.  No, you're not going to be sending lots of letters.   Yes, you do want an official letterhead and long form report template so you can send out official looking documents.
    • Email Signature Guidelines: Consistent email signature design and usage instructions.   If you don't define this your team members will adopt whatever the hell they want and it won't be what you want!

Setup Development and Production Environments

  • Supabase - Create project and app in Supabase
  • Federated Authentication Apps
    • LinkedIn
      • Create LinkedIn page for the company
      • Create LinkedIn app to support LinkedIn Auth
    • Microsoft Entra
      • Create a Microsoft Azure customer
        • You have to register this separately as a new account with Azure
        • If you just sign up with your e-mail it won’t wor
      • Go to Entra customer
      • Setup the domain name
      • Setup any admin users
        • Entra > Manager > Users > Add
        • Once added go to Roles and add “Global Administrator”
      • Create the app authorization end point for the app
    • Google - You’ll get Google for free with Firebase and it’s easy to create from the Firebase UI - so I’ll ignore that one
    • You’ll need to create an app in LinkedIn and invite your developers to the app.  
  • LLM customers / Data Sources
    • Diffbot - Most apps will need a Diffbot customer even if they use Creso as the backend for Company and People Data
    • Gemini - Setup via Google Workspace and accessed through Genkit and Vertex frameworks
    • Perplexity - For deep research and writing tasks
  • Source Code Control - GitHub - Specific apps setup as branches from the main stock application code base.
  • Cursor - Setup of the AI enabled IDE for development 
  • CRM - Integrations between the various apps and the shared 1 to 100 Salesforce instance
  • Figma - All designs are setup and controlled via a central 1 to 100 design customer

Create Code Branch

  • Create a child branch of the Baseplate app for your specific app.  This branch will serve as the app's dedicated codebase, separate from the main Baseplate main codebase.

Remote Configuration

Use the application configuration tool to create a new list of key / value pairs that can readily be loaded into the specific app.  

Application Build and Deploy Process

  • Create development, staging, and production environments for the app.
  • Setup and validate standardized CI/CD pipeline (e.g., GitHub Actions) works for this app
  • Ensure that app is pulling and applying the appropriate settings from Firebase Remote Configuration.

Developers will work within this branch to develop the app's features.

Handoff to Developers

  • At this point environment should be fully configured and usable to developers
  • Developers will be provided the Developer Guide: Building Applications on the Stock SaaS Platform and relevant customers to access the development, staging and production environments
  • Validate that developers have access to the app's codebase and all necessary customers and tools.
  • From that point forward developers should be able to build and deploy code for the application

Ongoing Support

  • The central DevOps team will provide ongoing support to the app's development team.
    • This includes monitoring the app's production environment, troubleshooting issues, and assisting with deployments.
  • A central team is responsible for updating and extending the Stock App framework over time.   They are available for consultation and feature requests as specific applications are implemented on the framework.
  • A central design team will design all the screens to be implemented in each app and provide the relevant development teams access to Figma prototypes for all screen the need to be (i) implemented in the app or (ii) updated or extended in the Stock app to support application specific functionality