A million-dollar engineering problem

Post by omarchowdhury » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 9:25 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #97

omarchowdhury wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome, do you have more information about your acquisition?

This was several years ago before we had the "growth hackers" lexicon. One of our customers bought the entire company to get a hold of the core team + essentially continued the "30%" deal as a long term incentive as convertible equity. Was a good run, and reinforces my post of if you can bring measurable / substantial value to large enterprise companies amazing things can happen. Large enterprise have fun accounting…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

QuinnyPig wrote: post #64

a13n wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also as a SaaS founder running on AWS, I would totally do this once our AWS bill is in the 4-5 figures.

It's almost like clockwork. Companies start wondering around $10K a month; they start doing something about it at $50K a month. I can almost set my watch by it. This turns into a fun parlor trick when I can estimate a client's bill based upon the story they tell me!

Post by user5994461 » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

a13n wrote: post #42

a13n wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or charge 20% of what you save them over the next year. This way you're charging more overall (especially if their costs are growing). Also your revenue will be more recurring rather than a one time thing. And by the time the 12 months is up, maybe they'll need your service again. :P

Also as a SaaS founder running on AWS, I would totally do this once our AWS bill is in the 4-5 figures.

Post by rhizome » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

QuinnyPig wrote: post #100

rhizome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are bursting and resizing an issue in the trough, though? GP's premise is that these companies have platform and load stability. There can be marginal gains in having a dynamic architecture, sure, but when it also costs "months of engineering," I don't see where the savings would be compelling, or even guaranteed.

There are companies "in the trough" who are contently spending tens of millions a year on AWS. It's hard to give generic advice for all situations-- as with so much else, context matters heavily. Those marginal gains could potentially pay for a dozen engineers...

Post by tyingq » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 9:37 PM UTC

QuinnyPig wrote: post #51

Negitivefrags wrote: post #16

A friend of mine was annoyed that a small service he liked was shutting down. He contacted the developer who said that they were shutting it down because the server costs were higher than the money they were making. They were spending 5k a month on AWS crap and claimed it was impossible to get any lower. He helped them consolidate everything onto a single rented dedicated server costing 400 a month. Now the service i…

> At this point simply not using AWS is a competitive advantage. Respectfully, I'm going to disagree. I consult full time on AWS cost optimization / reduction / understanding. If you blindly run things on AWS without an understanding of the costing model, that'll work for a time. As you scale, you start to realize "oh my god it runs on money." There are myriad ways around that, but a blanket "never use AWS" isn't goi…