Dude you are my spirit animal. Ive been building lean like this forever and thought I was the only nutcase out there...I too have had the same pitch problems as you, when a platform is hella efficient and there is no spending to be had on fixed assets, its not very appealing to investors.
I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
411–420 of 539 posts
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#412> 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…
Thats just swapping another enterprise focused concern into the mix. Your database connection latency is absolutely not a concerning part of your system.
Its not a significant concern because we've learned the hacks to work around it, but it is pretty freeing to not have to put hacks into your app.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#413> 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…
You can't simply copy/paste a Postgres database though...also you'd be surprised how fast SQLite can be...I've used SQLite for projects where I just couldn't get the performance elsewhere. For example, I had a names database with over 100 million rows in it for converting names to diminutives (e.g. David to Dave) and the inverse...after I precomputed a metric ton of indices it went like a rocket. Sure the file was quite big but oh boy was it quick.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#414If 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"…
Hmm backups seems like an important one.
Litestream [1] is quick to set up and has point in time backup to the second.
- [1] https://litestream.io
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Memory compression sounds like going back to DOS days. I think we're better off with writing tighter more performant code with no YAGNI. Alas, vibe coding will probably not get us there anytime soon.
Apple laptop CPUs have hardware memory compression and exceptionally high memory bandwidth for a CPU, and with their latest devices, very high storage bandwidth for a consumer SSD, so the equation is very different from the old DOS days.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you comparing PostgreSQL to an in-memory SQLite instead of a file-based one? Wow, memory is faster than disk, who would have thought?
Because it doesn't make a difference, because `SELECT 1` doesn't need to touch the database: Running 100,000 `SELECT 1` queries: PostgreSQL (localhost): 2.71 seconds SQLite (in-memory): 0.07 seconds SQLite (tempfile): 0.07 seconds ( https://gist.github.com/leifkb/d8778422d450d9a3f103ed43258cc... )
Queries for small SaaS are usually in the thousands of records, if not hundreds.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#417> 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…
> It's not much harder to use than SQLite, you get all of the Postgres features [..] More features is a net negative if you don't need those features. Ideally you want your DB to support exactly what you need and nothing more. Not typically realistic but the closer you can get the better.
A feature you don't think you need today, might be one you actually need tomorrow. It would be short-sighted to choose some tech based only on what you need today. If the extra features don't cost you anything, I can't see that as a "net negative".
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#418> I use Linode or DigitalOcean. Pay no more than $5 to $10 a month. 1GB of RAM sounds terrifying to modern web developers, but it is plenty if you know what you are doing. If you get one dedicated server for multiple separate projects, you can still keep the costs down but relax those constraints. For example, look at the Hetzner server auction: https://www.hetzner.com/sb/ I pay about 40 EUR a month for this: Disk: 7…
Agreed. Though, now that hetzner has increased pricing, OVH is quite competitively priced and has some newer hardware available.
everytime i want to put something in my dishwasher i pray to god it's not full and clean.
same with OVH, prayer-wise.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#419Can OP write another article focusing on the revenue side, how to actually bring in $10K MRR, forget about the tech stack, AI can solve that.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#420If 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"…
More and more, I'm seeing this issue with agents-based workflows as well. The training set is full (in quantity and in proportion) of codebases that are organized for very large teams, so that's what most prompted architectures lead to.
In my case I'm seeing it a lot on the front-end side. My clients end up with single-page apps that install Shadcn, Tailwind, React, React Router, Axios, Zod, React Form and Vite, all to center a some input elements and perform a few in-browser API calls. It's a huge maintenance burden even before they start getting value out of it.
These large setups are often a correct answer, but not the right one for the situation.