How I'd Design a Data Platform From Scratch in 2026

A Series B startup hired me to build its data platform from scratch. With 50M events/day and a one-person team, I chose boring, scalable tools: Fivetran, Airbyte, BigQuery, dbt, Dagster Cloud, and Looker. No Kafka. No Spark. Total cost under $3K/month. The focus: operability, trust, semantic consistency, and a clear upgrade path—not overengineering for imaginary scale.