David what you say is absolutely possible, that is, the reason could be more of a cultural / focus shift, but when I think to invest my money on a startup where

David what you say is absolutely possible, that is, the reason could be more of a cultural / focus shift, but when I think to invest my money on a startup where the core guys can't, if they want, setup a server and run their operations if needed or fix a bug overnight understanding what's wrong in a server, I feel there is something wrong. About the focus on making sure you build something the market wants, it is a good approach, but on the other side maybe the focus is just on that, and there is little interest about the ability to create a sustainable service where the only exit is not being acquired. A big part of being sustainable, especially with the freemium model, is cheap operations. It's a key value of being able to say to your users once you start to get some traction, ok, give me 5$ per month, and I'll be profitable. From that point of view startups spending like 2000$ / month while not even remotely profitable while it is possible perhaps with more wise coding and in-house ops to spend 200$ seems very odd to me, and not a trend I want to see encouraged, so I posted my original message in order to provide, maybe with some provocation intent, a different point of view. Just think for a moment if there are no longer big companies acquiring you (that is now the norm but it was not in the past) how the operations and costs point of view changes.