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I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

stevehanov.ca

121–130 of 539 posts

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says the guy with almost 5k HN comments in less than 5 years

I try to limit it to just 1-2 comments after my 4am ice facial and then no more than 4 comments while I am having my 3pm youth blood infusion. Consistency is key for the grindset.

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Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#122
post #81

The text feels incoherent to me and lacks some nuance. It starts about cutting costs by the choice of infrastructure and goes further to less resource hungry tools and cheaper services. But never compares the cost of these things. Do I save actually the upgrade to a bigger server by using Go and sqlite over let's say Python and postgres? Or does it not even matter when you have just n many users. Then I do not unders…

It actually starts with a completely unrelated anecdote:

"What do you even need funding for?"

I agree. The author claims to have multiple $10K MRR websites running on $20 costs. I also don't understand what he needs money for — shouldn't the $x0,000 be able to fund the $20 for the next project? It doesn't make any sense at all.

Then the author trails off and tells us how he runs on $20/month.

Well, why did you apply for funding? Hello?

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#123
post #47

There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM. By paying $20 instead of $5 you can get at least 8gb of RAM. You can use it for caches or a database that supports concurrent writes. The $15 difference won’t make any financial difference if you are trying to run a small business. Thinking about on how to fit everything on a $5 VPS does not help your business.

I think we have to re-think and re-evaluate RAM usage on modern systems that use swapping with CPU-assisted page compression and fast, modern NVMe drives. The Macbook Neo with 8GB RAM is a showcase of how people underistimated its capabilities due to low amount of RAM before launch, yet after release all the reviewers point to a larger set of capabilities without any issues that people didn't predict pre-launch.

Also, macOS is generally exceptional at caching and making efficient use of the fast solid state chips.

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#124
post #73

> The enterprise mindset dictates that you need an out-of-process database server. But the truth is, a local SQLite file communicating over the C-interface or memory is orders of magnitude faster than making a TCP network hop to a remote Postgres server. I don't want to diss SQLite because it is awesome and more than adequate for many/most web apps but you can connect to Postgres (or any DB really) on localhost over…

Looks like the overhead is not insignificant: Running 100,000 `SELECT 1` queries: PostgreSQL (localhost): 2.77 seconds SQLite (in-memory): 0.07 seconds ( https://gist.github.com/leifkb/1ad16a741fd061216f074aedf1eca... )

Most important is that that local SQLite gets proper backups, so a restore goes without issues

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#125
post #47

There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM. By paying $20 instead of $5 you can get at least 8gb of RAM. You can use it for caches or a database that supports concurrent writes. The $15 difference won’t make any financial difference if you are trying to run a small business. Thinking about on how to fit everything on a $5 VPS does not help your business.

I think we have to re-think and re-evaluate RAM usage on modern systems that use swapping with CPU-assisted page compression and fast, modern NVMe drives. The Macbook Neo with 8GB RAM is a showcase of how people underistimated its capabilities due to low amount of RAM before launch, yet after release all the reviewers point to a larger set of capabilities without any issues that people didn't predict pre-launch.

$5 VPS disks are nowhere near macbooks, they are shared between users and often connected via network. They don't seat close to CPU.

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#126
post #79

If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices". Saying "you can just run things on a cheap VPS" sounds amateurish: people are immediately out with "Yeah but scaling", "Yeah but high availability", "Yeah but backups"…

Apparently the phrase cargo cult software engineering is not common anymore. Explains these things perfectly.

I end up explaining this term to every junior developer that doesn't know it sooner or later, the same way I explain bike shedding to all PMs that don't know it... often sooner, rather than later.

It seems to really help if you can put a term to it.

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#127
post #73

> The enterprise mindset dictates that you need an out-of-process database server. But the truth is, a local SQLite file communicating over the C-interface or memory is orders of magnitude faster than making a TCP network hop to a remote Postgres server. I don't want to diss SQLite because it is awesome and more than adequate for many/most web apps but you can connect to Postgres (or any DB really) on localhost over…

Looks like the overhead is not insignificant: Running 100,000 `SELECT 1` queries: PostgreSQL (localhost): 2.77 seconds SQLite (in-memory): 0.07 seconds ( https://gist.github.com/leifkb/1ad16a741fd061216f074aedf1eca... )

Would be nice to see PGLite[1] compared too

1: https://pglite.dev/

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#128
post #95
post #47

There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM. By paying $20 instead of $5 you can get at least 8gb of RAM. You can use it for caches or a database that supports concurrent writes. The $15 difference won’t make any financial difference if you are trying to run a small business. Thinking about on how to fit everything on a $5 VPS does not help your business.

NVME read latency is around 100usec, a SQLite3 database in the low terabytes needs somewhere between 3-5 random IOs per point lookup, so you're talking worst case for an already meaningful amount of data about 0.5ms per cold lookup. Say your app is complex and makes 10 of these per request, 5 ms. That leaves you serving 200 requests/sec before ever needing any kind of cache. That's 17 million hits per day in about 3.…

You won't get such numbers on a $5 VPS, the SSDs that are used there are network attached and shared between users.

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#129
post #44

Can anybody validate this Github Copilot trick for accessign Opus 4.6? Sounds too good to be true.

Longtime happy Copilot user here. It's true.

The pricing is so good that it's the only way I do agentic coding now. I've never spent more than $40 in a month on Opus, and I give it large specs to work on. I usually spend $20 or so.

Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For read only it can be a great option. But even then I would choose D1 which has an amazing free tier and is sqlite under da hood.

But then you don't get the benefits of having the DB locally, with in-process access.

It's local to the worker? I don't understand what you mean.
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