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

stevehanov.ca

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

#151

Post by Dumbledumb »

InfraScaler wrote: post #133
senko wrote: 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"…

I don't know what to say. People keep saying these engineers exist and here I am not having seen a single, and I follow many indie hackers communities.

Because I think precisely the indie hacker community is not as keen to default to the big-tech stacks, because those are neither indie, nor hack-y :)

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

#152

Post by direwolf20 »

hackingonempty wrote: post #31

> 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…

IIRC TCP/IP through localhost actually benchmarked faster than Unix sockets because it was optimized harder. Might've been fixed now. Unix sockets gives you the advantage of authentication based on the user ID of who's connecting.

My experience with sqlite for server-based apps has been that as your app grows, you almost always eventually need something bigger than sqlite and need to migrate anyway. For a server-based app, where minimizing deployment complexity isn't an extremely important concern, and with mixed reads and writes, it's rarely a bad idea to use Postgres or MariaDB from the start. Yes there are niche scenarios where sqlite on the server might be better, but they're niche.

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

#153

Post by weird-eye-issue »

blitzar wrote: post #138
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nothing some Ayahuasca and a trip to Joshua tree (make sure you do it in that order) wont fix.

In what order do you recommend I fit that into my Burning Man itinerary?

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

#154

Post by dwedge »

gobdovan wrote: post #18

Nice list! I'd say the SQLite with WAL is the biggest money saver mentioned. One note: you can absolutely use Python or Node just as well as Go. There's Hetzner that offers 4GB RAM, 10TB network (then 1$/TB egress), 2CPUs machines for 5$. Two disclaimers for VPS: If you're using a dedicated server instead of a cloud server, just don't forget to backup DB to a Storage box often (3$ /mo for 1TB, use rsync). It's a good…

I need more info about devs getting infected over ssh in less than an hour. Unless they had a comically weak root password or left VNC I don't believe it at all

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

#155

Post by locknitpicker »

andersmurphy wrote: post #135
hackingonempty wrote: post #31

> 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…

Sqlite smokes postgres on the same machine even with domain sockets [1]. This is before you get into using multiple sqlite database. What features postgres offers over sqlite in the context of running on a single machine with a monolithic app? Application functions [2] means you can extend it however you need with the same language you use to build your application. It also has a much better backup and replication st…

> Sqlite smokes postgres on the same machine even with domain sockets [1].

SQLite on the same machine is akin to calling fwrite. That's fine. This is also a system constraint as it forces a one-database-per-instance design, with no data shared across nodes. This is fine if you're putting together a site for your neighborhood's mom and pop shop, but once you need to handle a request baseline beyond a few hundreds TPS and you need to serve traffic beyond your local region then you have no alternative other than to have more than one instance of your service running in parallel. You can continue to shoehorn your one-database-per-service pattern onto the design, but you're now compelled to find "clever" strategies to sync state across nodes.

Those who know better to not do "clever" simply slap a Postgres node and call it a day.

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

#156

Post by nlitened »

f311a wrote: 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.

> There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM

There is a good reason: teaching yourself not to over-engineer, over-provision, or overthink, and instead to focus on generating business value to customers and getting more paying customers. I think it’s what many engineers are keen to overlook behind fun technical details.

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

#157

Post by jwr »

balgg wrote: post #77
p4bl0 wrote: post #6

Just in case, if there are others like me who where wondering what does "MRR" means, it seems to be "monthly recurring revenue".

There is also ARR which is "annual recurring revenue" and you should know that when people use ARR they usually are just making up numbers based on their current MRR (so lying). I've seen people announce their ARR after running their business for two whole months!

That's not really "lying" — ARR is usually understood as your projected "Annual Run Rate". It's a useful metric, as long as it is understood that it is an estimate.

But, in all honesty, all RR numbers are estimates. MRR is also a "made up number" from a certain point of view: it is not equivalent to cash received every month, because of annual subscriptions, cancelations, etc.

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

#158

Post by InfraScaler »

pixelesque wrote: post #145
InfraScaler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does WAL really offer multiple concurrent writers? I know little about DBs and I've done a couple of Google searches and people say it allows concurrent reads while a write is happening, but no concurrent writers? Not everybody says so... So, can anyone explain what's the right way to think about WAL?

No it doesn't - it allows a single writer and concurrent READs at the same time.

Thanks! even I run a sqlite in "production" (is it production if you have no visitors?) and WAL mode is enabled, but I had to work around concurrent writes, so I was really confused. I may have misunderstood the comments.

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

#159

Post by jvuygbbkuurx »

bdelmas wrote: post #84
jampekka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$15 is not exactly zero, is it? If you don't need more than 1GB, why pay anything for more than 1GB? I recall running LAMP stacks on something like 128MB about 20 years ago and not really having problems with memory. Most current website backends are not really much more complicated than they were back then if you don't haul in bloat.

It is. With 10k MRR it represents 0.15% of the revenue. Having the whole backend costing that much for a company selling web apps is like it’s costing zero.

You probably don't make 10k MMR on day one. If you make many small apps, it can make sense to learn how to run things lean to have 4x longer runway per app.

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

#160

Post by InfraScaler »

dwedge wrote: post #150
InfraScaler wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to say. People keep saying these engineers exist and here I am not having seen a single, and I follow many indie hackers communities.

A devops coworker found my blog and asked me how I host it, is it Kubernetes. I told him it's a dedicated server and he seemed amazed. And this was just a blog. It's real

Does your coworker run a blog on k8s?
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