Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#2This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but...
Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3.
Just use managed services.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#3Are there any managed services with hard cost limits?
We're running or app on linode VPSs.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#4This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.
Agree. Cant think of anything that is more of waste of time.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#5This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.
Agree. Cant think of anything that is more of waste of time.
It works both ways.
You can save your startup thousands of dollars per month on services, with very little effort -- if you know how.
A larger group of people would struggle with the effort to do so competently.
Energy spent bringing more people into the first group is generally a positive thing.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#6If anyone hacking away or at the very earliest stages of a startup is reading this - run away. I'm sure this was a great learning process for the creator. However, as a new startup you should be aiming to take as many shortcuts as possible. Use every hosted or managed service that makes sense for you. Use anything that saves you time. Your job as the "technologist" is to deliver value (in the form of software) in the shortest time possible. Every hour you spend on distractions such as self-hosting is a self-own.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#7This looks cool as a learning experience and all, but... Self-hosting all your own stuff has to be the worst thing you can do as a new startup. You need to be focused on impactful work, not dealing with critical security updates to your Mattermost install. And definitely not worrying about figuring out how to properly HA databases and your self-hosted S3. Just use managed services.
So what should you focus on? What OSI layer is a good starting point? It depends on your skills right?
I agree you should use as much established products as possible but you build your stack and create that unique differentiation on the market by also learning technology as you go.
It all depends on where you land with your idea to the market. If you are selling knit figures online - you are right that you should not set this up but if you rely on technology advancements you should “own your technology” knowledge as much as possible because you will need it to solve problems along the way.
Too often I see business leaders come in and say I don’t know technology - let’s buy it all from MS or Amazon. This is not the way to go for your whole business. It’s like saying can you run my business for me. Your business is only as good as your best knowledge workers.
Another aspect is regulations, your data might not be allowed to leave the premise of your nation and these self hosted solutions at least with proper patching procedures offer this guarantee.
Managed services in all its glory to hand over the problem to someone else also hands over key learnings and if you have a complex enough environment you will need to deal with it at some point and for small businesses/startups the cost of outsourcing might be too high to begin with.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#8If anyone hacking away or at the very earliest stages of a startup is reading this - run away. I'm sure this was a great learning process for the creator. However, as a new startup you should be aiming to take as many shortcuts as possible. Use every hosted or managed service that makes sense for you. Use anything that saves you time. Your job as the "technologist" is to deliver value (in the form of software) in the…
> Every hour you spend on distractions such as self-hosting is a self-own.
I think the idea of this guide is to reduce the amount of time spent setting up a self-host to a minimum, though I agree it's usually not cost-effective.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#9I had a similar idea (but did not realize it as I was focusing on something else at the time), and thought it would be great if a company could create a template for everything a startup needs, so thanks for making a start.
In practice, there are differences in preferences and jurisdiction that require such a solution to be quite flexible (e.g. auto-registering a domain, doing accounting, filing taxes in different countries, running payroll), but some things everyone needs (landing page, website with intranet access to secure shared collab: GitLab, CryptPad, Email etc). It is a bad idea to self-host something that isn't mature; but if there was a relatively bullet proof solution, many startups could save cost and increase their run rate this way.
Re: Selfhosted tech starter pack for development of new project or startup
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Cant think of anything that is more of waste of time.
It works both ways. You can save your startup thousands of dollars per month on services, with very little effort -- if you know how. A larger group of people would struggle with the effort to do so competently. Energy spent bringing more people into the first group is generally a positive thing.
Labor cost to maintain is far more than the service cost for a small startup, most of the time you can get by on the free tiers for quite some time. Founders need to focus time/energy on what adds value, not updating services.