[dspillett]

> By using great tools and understanding them well you can do it with little manpower.

“and understanding them well” is doing a lot of legwork there. From a standing start how does a startup that has the skills & experience to make the product but not necessarily manage the infrastructure get to the point of understanding the tools well, or even knowing which tools are best to learn to the point of understanding well?

> So it is definitely possible to self-manage everything, for 5% of one engineer.

I can accept that as true, if you have the right person/people, and they are willing (particularly the on-call part).