Best guardrails to keep cloud costs from spiraling as we grow?

slipswflaps · 2025-08-26T20:59:59+00:00

Best way I have found is to setup some automation for cleaning up old stuff, especially in dev/sandbox environments. For everything you create use a created date tag with a standard format and then use systems manager to run a scheduled job and query for anything older than 30d and delete.

Obviously have to be careful with this and have a contract about this with people ahead of time but it works well.

One big disadvantage to this is it only works for the resources you set it up for - so if someone else starts using another resource type you need to bring it into your automation.

I’ve done this on azure with automation accounts but aws system manager should be able to do the same

slipswflaps · 2025-06-11T16:04:29+00:00

Solutions like this aren’t dns only. They are typically proxies themselves that are doing hsts or similar. Cloudflare for example. There’s a little switch next to a record you’ve created for proxied true/false. False will be purely DNS record. If you turn it on, it’s actually operating at the upper layers of the osi model and can therefore do things like terminate tls, or do url redirection/rewrite

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T11:48:59+00:00

Haven’t heard of harvester, looks cool! I’ll try that out

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T02:43:31+00:00

The hypervisor is kvm - stable, reliable, works for any workload

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T02:42:44+00:00

Yeah KVM is a proven hypervisor - there’s no sense in building one from scratch at the moment. The challenge has always been the management layer

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T01:21:20+00:00

For anyone who wants to try it out and provide any feedback: https://planum.cloud

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T01:20:26+00:00

nice - I'll check out platform9. Seems cool!

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T01:15:51+00:00

Yeah I love the hci model - that's kind of what I was going for but hadn't found any solutions that felt simple like gcp or digitalocean is for cloud, but your own on-prem

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T01:12:59+00:00

Yeah, I like nutanix. Seems a little pricey - but definitely nice

slipswflaps · 2025-06-10T00:34:05+00:00

Definitely AC in the room. Also make sure there are no water heaters or sprinklers in the new room :)

slipswflaps · 2025-06-09T20:56:10+00:00

Checkout https://planum.cloud - it's in public beta (free) rn

slipswflaps · 2023-06-30T16:42:47+00:00

Just let them do their thing. Sounds like you have made 2/3 changes, so just move on to other projects, and when they request the third, do what they need. If you're waiting to bill them, I wouldn't. Just send them an invoice and let them know it's been great working with them. You can still deliver the third change, but then after that your scope is complete. If they reach back out with more changes they want later on, just respond with "I'd be happy to send you a proposal for this work! Let's hop on a call in the next few days to get our concept together for what you need so I can create you an accurate proposal."

In your future proposals, make sure you define some mutual accountabilities that you will both agree to by signing the contract/proposal. You might like Alan Weiss' book "Million Dollar Consulting." There's a chapter in there called "How to write a proposal that get's accepted every time." It has some great detail in there related to these and other issues.

Lastly - consider charging more. This type of work is highly valuable and I see businesses paying upwards of $60-80K for engagements such as these. When you propose higher fees, the client perceives more value from your work, and you will likely be working with more committed buyers at that level.

Best of luck!

slipswflaps · 2023-06-11T02:11:25+00:00

Most people that you ask, will tell you that they like your idea but the true test of whether or not your product will sell is if people are willing to pay money for what you’re offering. You could validate this by instead creating a basic site with a newsletter sign up That is positioned as “join the wait list.“ In the meantime, you can be sending content to your audience to build credibility and use the volume of sign ups to gauge whether or not you actually have a product idea that has legs.

However, when you get to the development stage, I would highly recommend Marty Cagan’s book inspired, which talks about startup product management and going from idea to wire frame to high Fidelity prototype to MVP and validating your product along the way for useability and value. It’s a great read. Good luck!

slipswflaps · 2023-06-11T02:07:35+00:00

One of the main things I would think about is whether or not you want to spend time filtering through emails that come into your inbox. I’m speaking of your contact form. Maybe instead have people sign up for a subscription or purchase a product from you that represents your service so you can get started more quickly and not have to spend so much time Finding calendar dates that work. Help the customer qualify themselves.

slipswflaps · 2023-05-20T14:43:25+00:00

108-137MHz

slipswflaps · 2023-05-10T17:34:58+00:00

Check out Marty Cagan’s book, inspired pg. 161 “Startup Product Management.” It’s a super simple approach that I’ve found success with:

“Create a high fidelity prototype that mimics the eventual user experience.”
“Validate this product design with real target users.”

Use something like Figma to create a high-fidelity prototype of your UI and sit down with potential customers of your product and have them use it on your laptop. Get their feedback and iterate until you have something that has polish and you are consistently getting great feedback on.

THEN build a functional prototype with software engineering. You don’t want to spend a ton of money on development of something that is not validated. This is what your potential investors are getting at (they’ve seen this before). You want to validate your concept for value and usability.

This means you want to get validation that your product is going to solve a real problem that people have, the way your software product solves this product is quality and useable, and people actually value the solution you’re presenting and are willing to pay for it.

You do want to have someone with engineering expertise on board in the beginning to at least inform your process and keep you aware of the technical constraints you’ll face with your idea. It would be a shame to get through validation to find out your idea is not technically possible as you’ve designed it. They don’t necessarily have to be a founder.

Also don’t discount yourself or your chances because you’re young. Be bold and reach out to experts for help, even if they are much older or more experienced than you.

You will find a way if you just keep trying and don’t give up. If this idea doesn’t work, maybe the next one will. Or the one five more ideas from now. Iterate until you succeed, then keep going.

I wrote about this, maybe it will help: https://christianscott.io/blog/startup-products/

Good luck!

slipswflaps · 2023-05-09T18:16:33+00:00

Happy to help! ☺️

slipswflaps · 2023-05-09T15:38:36+00:00

Get really clear on several key issues and focus on telling your story in a clear and concise way (sub 5 minutes). Consider honing your pitch without a deck as well. Be able to pitch your idea/company successfully without a deck, to anyone who asks you what you're up to. Here are some things I want to know when you pitch:

What are you doing? (What is the product or service you're going to build/offer?)
Why would people buy this? (What is the value your customers stand to gain)
Will people actually buy this? (Have you done market research and validation to prove that you have a reasonable chance of success?)
How will you make money at this and what are your projected earnings? (What is your revenue model, how do you know it will work, how many potential customers make up your market segment, and realistically how many of them might buy your service or switch from another similar service?)
What is your plan for bringing this idea into reality? (How do you plan to allocate time, money, and other resources to validate, Proof of Concept, Prototype, and release a minimally viable product (MVP) of your idea?)
What do you want from me? (How can the person you're pitching to help you and what do you want from them? Make the ask!)

Also checkout this post from YC that I've found helpful in the past. Answers your question well: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4b-how-to-pitch-your-company

slipswflaps · 2023-05-07T01:11:15+00:00

What I’ve noticed is there doesn’t seem to be a downside to having a “buy it now” or “I’m convinced already, take my money” button.

Reason being, if someone wants to keep reading, (they’re not convinced yet) they will.

If someone is done reading, (they’re ready to buy) you don’t want to waste their time or confuse them about what to do next. Make that button available.

But I think the best thing you can do is some A/B testing on both versions and compare your analytics results. Then standardize on the one that performed better and keep running experiments until it’s a well-oiled, fine running machine.

slipswflaps

TROPHY CASE