[OrangeDelonge]

RDS gets you easy integration with the rest of the AWS services, which as a startup, you’re probably using quite a few of.

Also, if you are nickel and diming over expenses in the 50€ range, you’re probably at the wrong startup.

[9dev]

That was not quite the point I was making, which is that the equivalent RDS setup would come in at around ten times of that.

[williamdclt]

ten times 50euros? Sounds like a very reasonable deal to not have to think about these things or spend the time setting it up.

[9dev]

If expending 6k per year on your database alone sounds reasonable to you, we have very different perspectives on a good use of investor funds.

We’re not talking about maintaining your own k8s cluster here mind you, but a basic Postgres setup. If you can’t handle that comfortably in an afternoon, you probably shouldn’t be entrusted with customer data.

[mjr00]

> We’re not talking about maintaining your own k8s cluster here mind you, but a basic Postgres setup. If you can’t handle that comfortably in an afternoon, you probably shouldn’t be entrusted with customer data.

Intelligence is being able to set up your own postgres database with backups, PITR, retention policies, HA/replicas, and everything else needed to prevent catastrophic data loss. Wisdom is realizing that's a solved problem completely unrelated to your business, so you don't have to.

[9dev]

Well yeah, you can apply that to most problems you encounter as a company - there are service providers for pretty much anything you can imagine. That doesn't mean it's smart to spend a huge chunk of your revenue on OpEx, however.

[mjr00]

Sure, and you need to do the build vs buy math, but why not take the "If you can’t handle that comfortably in an afternoon, you probably shouldn’t be entrusted with customer data." logic further and say

1. Don't use a third-party auth provider, if you can't build out an OAuth provider in an afternoon you shouldn't be entrusted with login credentials

2. Don't use Github, if you can't build out an internal Gitlab instance in an afternoon you shouldn't be entrusted with securing source code

3. Don't use Github Actions or CircleCI, if you can't self-host a Jenkins server in an afternoon you shouldn't be entrusted with secure deployments

4. Don't use a lawyer or outsourced HR, if you can't draft legally binding employment agreement in an afternoon you shouldn't be entrusted with hiring people

[OrangeDelonge]

I think we live in very different realities, 6k a year is nothing, its a weeks worth of pay for 1 SWE. A 6k a year savings opportunity is not on any funded startups radar.

And RDS is doing a lot more for you than what you can set up in an afternoon w.r.t observability and features that are just a click away. I actually implemented some of those features when I worked there :)

[9dev]

We just might—not everyone works in SV. The 6k are a single database out of a vastly bigger pool of expenses, so unless you’re funded with six to seven digits from the start, it’s not nothing. At least in Europe, shelling out 300 grand on an SWE for an early stage company is delusional.