Building Multi-Tenant Business Platforms
A business platform is multi-tenant whether you call it SaaS or not. Two companies on one codebase is a tenancy problem. Permissions should follow the job people actually do — not a pile of boolean flags.
Permissions follow the job
On MatarTaxi, operators, drivers and owners do not share a screen. They share a domain. If you model that as twenty checkboxes, support becomes the permission system.
I start from workflows: who creates a trip, who sees a fare, who can cancel. Then I encode roles. The UI is a consequence, not the source of truth.
Onboarding is product work
If a tenant cannot go live in minutes, your team becomes the installer. That does not scale from Tangier to a second country.
A good onboarding is a thin vertical: one location, one user, one real transaction. Everything else is a later module, not a blocker.
Key takeaways
- Model jobs, then roles, then screens.
- Onboarding must produce a real first transaction.
- Two companies on one app is already multi-tenant.
FAQ
How many roles should a first version have?
Three is usually enough: operator, manager, owner. Add roles when a real person cannot do their job, not when a slide deck asks for them.