How I Built a Financial Dashboard for Startups

Ben — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:53:32 +0000

I'm a solo founder building culta.ai - a financial management platform that helps early-stage founders track budgets, burn rate, and cash flow without needing an accountant.

Here's a quick look at the stack and a few things I learned along the way.

The Stack

Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 19
Prisma + PostgreSQL
Stripe for billing and Connect
NextAuth for authentication
Tailwind CSS for styling
Deployed on Railway

Multi-Entity Architecture

One thing I needed early was support for multiple businesses per user. A freelancer might have a consultancy and a side project, they shouldn't need two accounts.

Every dashboard query is scoped to the selected entity using a React context provider. Switching between businesses is instant, no page reload.

Free Financial Calculators as a Growth Channel

Instead of just blogging, I built 17 interactive calculators - burn rate, runway, SaaS pricing, unit
economics, and more. Each one is its own page, targets a specific keyword, and funnels users toward signing up.

This has been a way more effective growth strategy than generic content marketing.

Lessons Learned

Start with the data model. Getting multi-entity right early saved me from a painful refactor later.
Calculators > blog posts for a financial tool. People searching "burn rate calculator" have higher intent than people reading "what is burn rate."
Next.js App Router is great once you get past the learning curve. Server components made the dashboard noticeably faster.

Check It Out

If you're an early-stage founder trying to get a handle on your finances, give it a try:
https://culta.ai

Happy to answer any questions about the architecture or growth strategy.

DEV Community: Ben

How I Built a Financial Dashboard for Startups