The Startup Monorepo Trifecta: Web, Mobile, and Serverless
Grab the code from this article here: https://github.com/hypercolor/trifecta-monorepo
I'm a big fan of using a Monorepo with startups. There is a learning curve to be climbed, but the benefits are worth it:
Faster development velocity
Better visibility into the team's activity
Shared code modules
Shorter troubleshooting cycles
As I move more projects into a monorepo pattern, I've been refining my ideal early-stage tech stack where all three primary players can share code: web, mobile, and serverless/async. As a startup, you have to balance building a maintainable and scalable tech stack with the need to keep things lean and market-focused. Monorepos are a great way to achieve this!
I published a reference repo that contains some of my favorite patterns, including:
Mobile App in React Native + Expo
SSR React + REST API
Serverless Async Processing
Understanding the Monorepo Advantage
Before diving into specifics, let's establish what makes monorepos valuable for startups. In a conventional multi-repository approach, your web frontend, mobile app, and backend services each live in separate repositories. This is the easiest way to get started - just check out a tutorial and jump in.
A monorepo, by contrast, keeps all your code in a single repository. This seemingly simple organizational choice yields serious benefits that address many early-stage development challenges:
1. Better Visibility into Developer Activity
In a startup environment where priorities shift quickly, visibility into what everyone is working on becomes crucial. A monorepo provides a central location to track development activity across platforms. Pull requests and commits are organized in one place, making it easier to:
Understand full-stack feature development
Centralize your test, quality and release mechanisms
Track velocity across your entire technical stack
Perform code reviews with full context of changes across systems
At Hypercolor Digital, we've seen this benefit translate directly into better coordination among team members, especially in projects where we're simultaneously developing web and mobile interfaces that consume the same backend services.
2. Faster Troubleshooting
Even startups should care about their "Mean-Time-To-Resolution" - the average time it takes your team to get things fixed when a critical bug arises. Monorepos have sped up our turnaround time, as we can:
Trace the problem from frontend request to backend handler without switching contexts
See the entire history of changes across systems in a single timeline
Test fixes across all affected components simultaneously
Deploy coordinated changes that ensure compatibility
3. Shared Code Modules
Perhaps the most compelling advantage for startups is the ease of sharing code across platforms. In a monorepo structure:
Common utilities can be written once and used everywhere
API interfaces can be defined in a single location
Business logic can be standardized across platforms
UI components can maintain consistency between web and mobile
Having this consistency gives me a sense of security as we are often moving fast and building new features, which can introduce bugs if the full-stack consequences of changes are not easily understood.
From Launch to Scale: The Monorepo Lifecycle
A common misconception is that monorepos work well for early-stage projects but become unwieldy as systems grow. In my experience, the opposite is true when implemented correctly.
Early Development Phase Benefits
During initial development, monorepos provide:
Easier onboarding for new developers (clone one repo and go)
Rapid development across all platforms
Easy pivoting when requirements change
Reduced overhead for build and deployment configuration
Scaling Phase Advantages
As your product matures and scales, monorepos continue to deliver value through:
Coordinated versioning across components
Atomic changes that ensure compatibility between systems
Simplified refactoring of shared code
Easier coordination of architectural design patterns
At Hypercolor Digital, we've maintained monorepos for projects that started as minimal viable products and scaled to support millions of users.
Real-World Implementation
In upcoming posts, I'll dive deeper into a few topics that will help make your monorepo dreams come true:
Shared API Type Definitions: How to maintain a single source of truth for your data models
CI/CD Strategy for Monorepos: Implementing effective build and deployment pipelines
Toolchain Headaches: Solving some common issues that arise when integrating apps with different frameworks and dependencies
Conclusion
The monorepo approach isn't just theoretical — it's a battle-tested strategy that has helped our team deliver successful products for startups across multiple industries. By unifying web, mobile, and serverless code in a single repository, we've created a development workflow that puts our founders in a great position to manage their tech stack for the life of the product.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series, where I'll explore how shared API type definitions can eliminate an entire category of bugs from your development process.
Have you experimented with monorepos in your projects? What challenges or benefits have you encountered? Share your experiences in the comments below.