I really enjoy reading these to learn the infra behind one man bands.
Another good read is Wenbin from Listen notes. https://www.listennotes.com/blog/how-i-accidentally-built-a-...
The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
111–120 of 334 posts
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#112Anyone heard of a One Man SaaS unicorn, i.e. a product that scaled to $10m+ ARR with only a single founder right till the end?
I believe Plenty of Fish (a dating site) was in that category for some time, though the founder did wind up hiring people before eventually selling it for $575m.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, the issue isn't that Google will jack up the costs but that they'll deprecate their infrastructure and push the migration work onto you, often forcing you to reimplement major features.[0] One notable example is how their NDB client library used to automatically handle memcache for you, but they got rid of that with Cloud NDB Library and forced clients to implement their own caching. The sequence of…
Are you still with them? If yes, would love to hear why. Otherwise, what made you jump?
I still use GCP, but I avoid locking myself into their proprietary infrastructure when I'm writing new stuff. I feel like Google is far too cavalier about deprecating services and forcing their customers to do migration work.
It is hard to replace GCP's managed datastores because I really don't want to maintain my own database server (even if it's a managed service that someone else upgrades for me). So I've stuck to Google Cloud Datastore / Firestore, but I've been experimenting a lot with Litestream[0], and I think that might be my go-to choice in the future instead of proprietary managed datastores.
Litestream continuously streams data from a SQLite database to an S3 backend. It means that you can design your app to use SQLite and then sync the database to any S3 provider. I designed a simple pastebin clone on top of Litestream, and I use it in production for my open source KVM over IP. It's worked great so far, though I'm admittedly putting a pretty gentle workload on it (a handful of requests per day).
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#114My one-man-SaaS setup: - Static frontend hosted on Netlify (free unlimited scale) - Backend server on Google App Engine (connecting to Gcloud storage and managed DB via magic) I realize I'm opening myself up to vendor lock-in and increased costs down the road (if I even get that far), but I've wrangled enough Docker/k8s/Ingress setups in the past to know it's just not worth the time and effort for a non-master.
cloud vendor lock-in fears are overblown. pricing and features will always be competitive between the big vendors. I suspect people waste a lot of time/money trying to be cloud agnostic. Real vendor lock-in is when you have decades of code written against an Oracle DB and you're getting charged outrageous Oracle rates and it would also cost a fortune migrate.
... a decade later:
Real cloud vendor lock-in is when you have decades of code written against a [cloud vendor] and you're getting charged outrageous [cloud] rates and it would also cost a fortune migrate.[sic]
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#115This goes against the HN trope that "you don't need Kubernetes unless you are Google-size". It turns out Kubernetes is actually perfect for small teams as it solves many hard operational issues, allowing you to focus on the important part of the stack: the application. The key is to stick to a simple setup (try not to mess with networking config) and use a managed offering such as GKE. We may need a Kubernetes, The G…
> This goes against the H̶N̶ trope that "you don't need Kubernetes unless you are Google-size". FTFY. Why think of groups of people as though they have a single mind?
I think you just fixed your own uncharitable interpretation.
Read it as "this goes against a trope I have seen many times on HN that".. that is a reasonable interpretation and not saying what you say it is.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#116Anthony, this is awesome!
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not, you can check e.g. the EDPB's recommendation [1] on this. At the very least you'd need to use data mapping and ensure EU citizens data stays within the EU, the author's service advertises "200 edge locations around the world" so I'm skeptical whether data won't leave the EU. Not many companies care about this and there's little enforcement so far, I think it's fair to think about this though if you're ru…
You don't have to obey the GDPR for users outside the EU, so as long as the central storage is located in the EU (and only replicated across EU countries, which is easily configurable), the author is most likely absolutely fine. By the edge locations, I'd assume he's serving cached static files, such as his blog or tracking scripts from there using CloudFlare. Assuming CloudFlare is not falsely advertising their GDPR…
As a EU company you have to obey GDPR for all of your users, regardless whether they're EU citizens or not.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#118My one-man-SaaS setup: - Static frontend hosted on Netlify (free unlimited scale) - Backend server on Google App Engine (connecting to Gcloud storage and managed DB via magic) I realize I'm opening myself up to vendor lock-in and increased costs down the road (if I even get that far), but I've wrangled enough Docker/k8s/Ingress setups in the past to know it's just not worth the time and effort for a non-master.
People here underestimate google app engine a lot. But I doubt if there is better one person Saas service out there.
Re: google app engine. Is it possible to set a cap on how much resources are used?
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#119A lot of people are going to jump on the "he used k8s and he doesn't even work at Google scale!" part of this writeup, but I think it's a perfect demonstration of the concept of innovation tokens [1]. He admits in TFA that clickhouse was the only new piece of tech in his stack, and he was already familiar with k8s et al - so he's able to focus on actually building the products he wants. I could see somebody unfamilia…
Innovation tokens is such a fantastic concept. When I brainstorm products I like to make a simple plan, and then map out "Whats new to me" to help me decide what I am really trying to accomplish. Prototyping a new idea is very hard and requires a lot of iteration, using a new tech complicates that even if its better. Alternatively, if the prototype is purely for fun, then new tech can be a great value add, as even if the prototype takes a turn for the worse (i.e. too hard to finish), you get satisfaction from learning some new tech. I've noticed since being very intentional about it, side project work has become considerably more enjoyable.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#120My one-person SaaS architecture: It’s a Rails monolith deployed on Heroku. I’d rather have the time to build new features for my user base than spend it learning how to use k8s or wrangling AWS through its abysmal console website.
Do you think you're better than the OP because you're using a simpler stack?