3 ms·

Startups prefer cloud because: 1) a lot of startups were never about building a sustainable business but to live the "startup founder" lifestyle and provide cu

Startups prefer cloud because: 1) a lot of startups were never about building a sustainable business but to live the "startup founder" lifestyle and provide cushy jobs for your friends. In this case, complexity is a feature as it gives you an excuse to raise a lot of money, hire a lot of people and give those people tons of busywork to do (which they wouldn't have with a simpler stack). 2) even for startups who do want to build a sustainable business, VCs are often close-minded and anything that doesn't fit the typical "engineering playground" mold described above may fail technical due diligence despite it being better from an engineering point of view. So cloud and overengineering it is.

nine_k 3y ago
A bit less cynically, a startup is a company designed for enormous growth. If not, it's just a sparkling regular business. If your user base grows 100x in a year, there's no easy way to scale using your own hardware. But this is exactly the (rare) case the VCs are after. So a startup is required to build their tech in the cloud, even if in 99% of the cases it's an overkill and an extra expense.
- dathinab 3y ago
  If you have enough hard technical changes due to changes in monetization model or similar it might not even have any extra expenses. I think the company I currently work for might have been bankrupt by now (after due to a marked change our original monetization strategy started to dry up) if we hadn't taken advantage of the flexibility of the cloud. (But then we still might not make it, but at least we had a chance to make it which I don't see us having had we tried to have our own dedicated hardware.) Then there are also some highly managed/opinionated "cloud providers" (e.g. not aws), while they tend to have even more absurd prices for compute power they tend to actually safe quite a bit man power (in difference to e.g. AWS where the person time savings seam to be completely eaten up by subtle complexity and need for optimizing deployments in ways you otherwise would not need to). Which can make them attractive for very small startups which very low compute requirements. Through such startups also tend to not have calssical VC.
dathinab 3y ago
> "startup founder" lifestyle and provide cushy jobs for your friends I have yet to see a startup for which that is the case, like at all. Idk if it's a SV thing but in most of the world this won't fly. Most important you are missing the most important reason why startup go with the cloud. Flexibility. Startups often pivot multiple times in various aspects before they find a way approach substainability. Like common are changes in monetization model and changes in target audience. This often also comes with major changes in requirements for compute/hardware. This isn't just about amount of resources but also kind of them. Furthermore it also often comes with changes in architecture where services provides by AWS and similar can make such changes much faster/easier. This means that for startups setting up their own hardware is a form of self-locking which startups can not always afford, and can even lead to a startup failing. Naturally once a company has found a promising way to reach profitability the cloud vs. non cloud decision needs to be reconsidered.

nine_k 3y ago

A bit less cynically, a startup is a company designed for enormous growth. If not, it's just a sparkling regular business. If your user base grows 100x in a year, there's no easy way to scale using your own hardware. But this is exactly the (rare) case the VCs are after. So a startup is required to build their tech in the cloud, even if in 99% of the cases it's an overkill and an extra expense.

dathinab 3y ago
If you have enough hard technical changes due to changes in monetization model or similar it might not even have any extra expenses. I think the company I currently work for might have been bankrupt by now (after due to a marked change our original monetization strategy started to dry up) if we hadn't taken advantage of the flexibility of the cloud. (But then we still might not make it, but at least we had a chance to make it which I don't see us having had we tried to have our own dedicated hardware.) Then there are also some highly managed/opinionated "cloud providers" (e.g. not aws), while they tend to have even more absurd prices for compute power they tend to actually safe quite a bit man power (in difference to e.g. AWS where the person time savings seam to be completely eaten up by subtle complexity and need for optimizing deployments in ways you otherwise would not need to). Which can make them attractive for very small startups which very low compute requirements. Through such startups also tend to not have calssical VC.

dathinab 3y ago

> "startup founder" lifestyle and provide cushy jobs for your friends I have yet to see a startup for which that is the case, like at all. Idk if it's a SV thing but in most of the world this won't fly. Most important you are missing the most important reason why startup go with the cloud. Flexibility. Startups often pivot multiple times in various aspects before they find a way approach substainability. Like common are changes in monetization model and changes in target audience. This often also comes with major changes in requirements for compute/hardware. This isn't just about amount of resources but also kind of them. Furthermore it also often comes with changes in architecture where services provides by AWS and similar can make such changes much faster/easier. This means that for startups setting up their own hardware is a form of self-locking which startups can not always afford, and can even lead to a startup failing. Naturally once a company has found a promising way to reach profitability the cloud vs. non cloud decision needs to be reconsidered.