When you go down the VC path, they expect hypergrowth; certain doors are opened and others are closed. Personally, next time around I minimize dependence on funding.
VC kids treat themselves like kings and never truly get to hacking. What ever happened to internal hardware? Build, setting up, and tuning servers is one of the most fun parts of running a service.
When you get millions in funding its easy to piss away on the highest tier services. When you start from the ground up, every cent is managed.
It's a lot of fun, but it's also a bit of a trap in my experience. My previous startup was all custom, my current one is all as hands off as we can be infrastructure wise.
Unless going custom allows you to do something that you couldn't otherwise do (cases which are rare, but existent), it's just optimizing margin. And you can't margin your way to success. (To failure yes, to success no.)
As noted above, their hosting was a big number, but it wasn't a dominant cost. It's like Amdahl's law of money, it doesn't matter how little you spend in one area if that area isn't dominating your costs.
And all else being equal, it's usually the wrong choice; the best way to grow the bottom line is to grow the top line. If you can spend X weeks cutting costs by Y$, or X weeks increasing revenue by Y$, grow the top line. It's fuel, it gives you options.
The thing I miss the most about doing it our selves was the raw fun of it, and how efficient it felt. But in retrospect it was a lot of time spent on things that ultimately didn't change the outcome.
Build, setting up, and tuning servers is one of the most fun parts of running a service.
As someone who has worked in this space, I can tell you that the skills simply do not exist. They don't hire for them, because they all ("all") use outsourced hosting and deployment frameworks that insulate them from these things.
It's kind of sad really. I'd love to have a big office with a dedicated center to some really awesome equipment. It's like a work of art that you crafted yourself, right up to the cable management!
It's loads of fun, especially when you have dedicated chillers and sufficient power for everything. However, as you come to the realization that your C-level execs negotiated forever contracts for keeping data and servers spinning with no common outage windows, consolidation/virtualization becomes difficult and eventually the reality distortion field collapses and you're out on the streets with everyone blaming you for the failure, despite your ability to run modern services with stone knives and bearskins.
Plus, you don't have that all-important "Cloud" buzzword for them to throw around!
Yes, VC kids. Let's be honest. Kid creates a decent website/service in a few days/weeks -> VC funding -> ludicrous spending on top tier development environments, offices, staff, and services -> "oh fuck".
I'm 20 myself, and while I'm not the hottest shit around, I have been working at a bank for the past two years. I've been exposed to some really smart people with extremely challenging problems, way more so than creating a pretty service in a few weeks and getting crazy amounts of funding for a business that's most likely going to fail because we're just that, kids.
Before coming into my role, I truly did think I was the best because I was able to create pretty websites with whatever is the latest JS library everyone is fawning over. That illusion was destroyed immediately when you start designing and working on infrastructures that have to handle millions of payments a minute, working with multiple vendors, business units, testing units, and various other departments you need to familiarize yourself with.
I would urge you to consider whether you have an accurate picture of the world. It would be a staggering claim, to me, that even most of the people who get VC money could be characterized as "kids". Getting VC money is a lot of networking, calling, follow-ups, and frank discussion of terms. I don't think that selects well for "kids".
When you get millions in funding its easy to piss away on the highest tier services. When you start from the ground up, every cent is managed.