Cloud Computing Benefits for Startups

What'd happen with 2.1 B unnecessary API calls? It will be a STRUGGLE to manage it. Cloud costs will break the roof. Even then, Duolingo solved it. Here's what they did 👇 Background: Duolingo was wasting millions in unnecessary API calls. It was happening as features like stories, adventures, and DuoRadio scaled. Instead of patching up the problem, they reimagined their cost management strategy entirely, turning a challenge into an opportunity for efficiency. But the journey wasn’t without hurdles; they faced significant challenges: 1️⃣ Legacy systems waste resources. 2️⃣ Overprovisioning caused by poor defaults. 3️⃣ Staging environments costlier than production. So, what did Duolingo do? 🔹 Decommissioned unused resources: They eliminated outdated clusters, unused databases, and redundant microservices from deprecated features, reducing waste and reallocating resources to active workloads. 🔹 Enabled full cost visibility with CloudZero: Duolingo broke down cloud costs into queryable components, uncovering inefficiencies like staging environments costing more than production and identifying critical optimization opportunities. 🔹 Right-sized and optimized performance: They fine-tuned configurations for 90-95% memory utilization, migrated databases to a cloud-native, serverless data platform, and leveraged on-demand resources to maximize efficiency. The results? ✅ Service-to-service traffic dropped by 60% ✅ 20% reduction in cloud costs within months. ✅ Hundreds of thousands saved annually from optimizing a single service. The bottom line: When optimizing cloud infrastructure, focus on building visibility, cleaning up tech debt, and right-sizing resources. #AI #Duolingo #CaseStudy #Simform #GenAI P.S. 💡 In yesterday’s newsletter, I covered how Duolingo reimagined its cost management strategy. Subscribers get access to: - Product engineering insights. - Proven development strategies. - Latest Azure & Gen AI trends. Check it out! Link in comments ⬇️

Many smart people treat cloud migration as merely an IT or engineering task. This narrow view often leads to failures. What’s missing is the focus on outcomes rather than just tasks ⬇️ Cloud migration isn't just about transferring data; it involves higher costs but offers greater benefits like improved product usage tracking and seamless updates. The key is understanding these benefits and aligning them with business goals. As a product manager, your role is to steer the migration process by identifying which components are crucial for users and require modernization. It's not a one-time task. Begin with critical parts that need updates, and rethink your user experience—don’t just replicate the old mainframe architecture. This is your chance to enhance user experience, gain better data insights, and increase business value. The goal isn’t just moving to the cloud but transforming how your product meets customer needs. Recognize the strategic value of cloud migration. Ensure everyone understands why it’s necessary and highlight the potential benefits. Approach migration piece by piece, evaluating where you can deliver customer value immediately. Remember, mishandling the transition can lead to churn. It's about managing risks, maintaining a clear vision, and understanding the long-term benefits of cloud adoption. Use this opportunity not just to migrate but to innovate and improve customer satisfaction. If you'd like more insights or have questions, comment below or drop your question on the Dear Melissa website!

17% CAGR. $2.3 trillion by 2032. 89% of companies using multi-cloud. Cloud computing has given CRM a massive upgrade. In a digital-first world, customers expect more. Businesses are under pressure to keep up. Companies leading the pack are using multi-cloud, AI, edge computing, and serverless architecture. And it’s making all the difference. Traditional systems? Too rigid, too slow, and often outdated. Here’s how cloud computing is addressing these pain points: 𝟭. 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 Cloud CRMs make it easy to scale as business needs change. This saves on infrastructure costs and avoids being locked into outdated systems. Example: 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀 can use cloud CRMs to manage seasonal spikes (like Black Friday) without overwhelming your system. 𝟮. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 With cloud computing, teams gain real-time data access, allowing faster decisions and more relevant customer interactions. Example: For 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀, cloud CRMs allow instant access to patient information, enabling faster, personalized care. 𝟯. 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 AI-powered cloud CRMs improve predictive analytics, lead scoring, and customer service response times. Example: 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 use AI in CRMs to anticipate customer needs and automate support, providing a proactive approach that improves customer relationships. 𝟰. 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 Cloud CRMs handle data securely, meeting regulations like GDPR and CCPA without requiring in-house infrastructure. Example: 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗺𝘀 leverage cloud CRMs with built-in compliance to protect sensitive data, building client trust. 𝟱. 𝗖𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 Cloud solutions reduce infrastructure costs and allow smaller teams to access enterprise-grade CRM functionalities. Example: 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽𝘀 using cloud CRMs avoids high upfront costs, providing access to scalable tools that allow you to compete with larger companies. 𝟲. 𝗠𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 Mobile-friendly CRMs allow teams to access information on the go, essential for real-time client interactions. Example: For 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, mobile-first CRMs keep agents connected, allowing them to manage property information and client needs from anywhere. If you're in CRM or service delivery, don’t wait to explore cloud solutions. Focus on flexibility and security, and find ways to use AI and automation to improve customer interactions. The investment today will keep you agile and ready for what’s next. #CloudComputing #CRM #ServiceDelivery #CustomerExperience #DigitalTransformation #AI

We helped ClickUp reduce its cloud cost by 20%. As CEO of Yotascale, here’s my take on how we did it and what it meant to the ClickUp team: The first step? Visibility. As the engineering manager said, “Yotascale gave us laser focus on regional and platform service cost optimization.” Without visibility, you can’t measure costs; without measurement, optimization is impossible. We helped simplify what seemed complex by breaking down their cloud spending across teams and services. Yotascale helped draw lines of accountability and ownership for ClickUp. But visibility alone isn’t enough. Ultimately, what made our collaboration work was ClickUp’s culture of accountability. See, culture isn’t something we inject. Our product can only empower companies that are cloud cost-conscious, empower teams to take ownership of their cloud costs, and see cloud cost as a KPI. In addition, ClickUp was an early adopter of Yotascale's Yota Copilot, our GenAI-powered tool designed specifically for FinOps. The same engineering manager shared how it reduced the time he spent on cloud cost management from 10 hours a week to just 20 minutes. That’s 9 hours and 40 minutes freed up for high-value tasks. Nobody else in the market is doing that today. Finally, it’s about scaling with confidence. Their team described Yotascale as “the only solution tough enough to handle our sprawling enterprise cloud.” We helped ClickUp when they were growing fast—new teams, services, applications and more. By giving them X-ray vision into every corner of their tech stack, we helped them shift from being *reactive* to *proactive*. No more knee-jerk reactions like, “You’re spending too much, cut costs in half.” Instead, we enabled them to understand why high cloud spend happens and leave room to address it thoughtfully. A culture of collaboration replaced friction. ClickUp is now a shining example of strategic FinOps. They’ve moved past reactive decisions, adopted self-service tools, and built a collaborative approach to cloud cost management that saves money and time. The result? 20% savings on cloud costs.

A modernization journey to Cloud Native has #cost benefits. #Cloud-native container environments are typically more cost-effective than VM-based environments due to better resource utilization, scalability, and automation features. Resource Utilization: #Containers: Containers generally use fewer resources than VMs because they share the host OS, resulting in less overhead. This allows running more applications on the same hardware, reducing overall costs. VMs: Each VM requires a full OS installation, leading to higher overhead and resource consumption. This results in fewer applications per host and potentially higher costs. #Pricing Models: AWS and Azure both offer pay-as-you-go models, but containers can be run on services like AWS ECS or EKS and Azure AKS, where resources scale dynamically based on demand, leading to cost savings. VMs are generally priced by size (vCPU, memory) and duration of use, leading to more predictable but often higher costs due to unused, idle capacity. #Scalability and Elasticity: Containers: Both #AWS Fargate and #Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support autoscaling, allowing containers to scale in real-time, optimizing cost efficiency by only using resources when needed. VMs: While VMs can be manually scaled or automatically through certain cloud services, they are slower to scale and often over-provisioned, leading to increased costs. #Maintenance Costs: Containers: Offer a serverless container option (e.g., AWS Fargate, Azure Container Instances) that offloads infrastructure management, potentially lowering operational costs. VMs: Require more effort in management, patching, and monitoring, increasing operational overhead and costs. #Cost Comparison (AWS and Azure): AWS: For example, running a t3.medium EC2 instance costs approximately $0.0416 per hour, whereas running a container using AWS Fargate can start as low as $0.0126 per hour (for compute and memory). Azure: Similarly, a D2_v3 VM instance costs around $0.096 per hour, while Azure Container Instances might cost $0.000012 per GB and $0.000012 per vCPU per second, offering more granular billing and potential savings. Actionable Steps & Risks: #Analyze Workloads: For optimal cost efficiency, assess whether your workloads can benefit from containerized environments, especially for microservices or stateless applications. #Use Autoscaling: Implement autoscaling strategies for containers to dynamically adjust resource consumption based on real-time demand. #Monitor Hidden Costs: While containers reduce resource consumption, factor in networking, storage, and data transfer costs, which can vary depending on the cloud provider and setup. #Risk Mitigation: For mission-critical applications, ensure that the container management platform has robust monitoring, security, and backup strategies to avoid potential downtime or security breaches.

Imagine you’re filling a bucket from what seems like a free-flowing stream, only to discover that the water is metered and every drop comes with a price tag. That’s how unmanaged cloud spending can feel. Scaling operations is exciting, but it often comes with a hidden challenge of increased cloud costs. Without a solid approach, these expenses can spiral out of control. Here are important strategies to manage your cloud spending: ✅ Implement Resource Tagging → Resource tagging, or labeling, is important to organize and manage cloud costs. → Tags help identify which teams, projects, or features are driving expenses, simplify audits, and enable faster troubleshooting. → Adopt a tagging strategy from day 1, categorizing resources based on usage and accountability. ✅ Control Autoscaling → Autoscaling can optimize performance, but if unmanaged, it may generate excessive costs. For instance, unexpected traffic spikes or bugs can trigger excessive resource allocation, leading to huge bills. → Set hard limits on autoscaling to prevent runaway resource usage. ✅ Leverage Discount Programs (reserved, spot, preemptible) → For predictable workloads, reserve resources upfront. For less critical processes, explore spot or preemptible Instances. ✅ Terminate Idle Resources → Unused resources, such as inactive development and test environments or abandoned virtual machines (VMs), are a common source of unnecessary spending. → Schedule automatic shutdowns for non-essential systems during off-hours. ✅ Monitor Spending Regularly → Track your expenses daily with cloud monitoring tools. → Set up alerts for unusual spending patterns, such as sudden usage spikes or exceeding your budgets. ✅ Optimize Architecture for Cost Efficiency → Every architectural decision impacts your costs. → Prioritize services that offer the best balance between performance and cost, and avoid over-engineering. Cloud cost management isn’t just about cutting back, it’s about optimizing your spending to align with your goals. Start with small, actionable steps, like implementing resource tagging and shutting down idle resources, and gradually develop a comprehensive, automated cost-control strategy. How do you manage your cloud expenses?

The easiest way to make more money is, (without getting any new customers) → It’s not raising a round. → It’s not closing a big client. → It’s getting AWS to pay your cloud bill. Yes, really. Most founders don’t know this: AWS gives away millions of dollars every year. But most of it goes unused or wasted. Here’s the playbook I use to help startups make the most of it: 1. Get the real credits Forget the $2K trial coupon. I help you access AWS credits through the right programs, pitch decks, and partner paths. This alone can cover your infrastructure for a year or more. 2. Make those credits last Most teams burn their credits in 2–3 months. Why? Because no one told them how to build smart. I work with you to: → Right-size infra → Auto-scale what matters → Kill waste before it gets expensive 3. Unlock AWS perks no one talks about There’s a secret world of AWS resources for startups: → Private support Slack groups → Direct AWS team connects → Roadmap help → Feature previews → Extra credits (yes, again) But they’re invite-only. I'll help you get there. 4. Avoid the post-credit cliff The worst surprise? When credits run out, your first real bill arrives. We plan day one for what happens day 1000. That’s how you avoid cloud chaos. If you're an early-stage founder building anything on AWS. → This isn’t a hack. → It’s not a trick. → It’s your right as a startup. You just need someone who knows where the doors are. I’ve done this for dozens of startups. Want help? DM me “credits” Let’s save money and scale smart.

🚀 Navigating Cost Efficiency! 🌐💡 Tech Expenses are a critical challenge for startups, encompass both capital and labor costs. Later, I'll delve into the labor-intensive aspect. Notably, many small businesses pay for resources they could access for free or at significantly subsidized rates. In the early stages of Q4, I aided a Canadian startup in assembling their development team. They further sought my assistance in evaluating their overall product infrastructure, revealing a monthly expenditure of nearly $3,000 on Cloud resources alone. Identifying common resources such as RDS, EC2, NAT, ALB and ELASTICACHE, I assessed the backend API structure. In a 5-week timeframe, I transitioned the architecture to a serverless model, leveraging lambda functions and API gateways for enhanced efficiency. Optimizing efficiency, I found 80% of the product's functionality was event-based, negating the need for continuous server operation. I also reduced their frontend server cost, deploying it seamlessly with S3 and CloudFront for streamlined content delivery. I implemented several cost-saving initiatives, suggesting alternatives such as Trello instead of Jira, ClickUp over Confluence, and utilizing free options like Slack and Azure Credits etc (Will go into this some other time) Concluding this brief project, I successfully reduced their monthly bill to approximately $550 through resource optimization at the infrastructure level. Further insights on application-level enhancements will be shared at a later time.

💰 We cut our AWS bill by 30% — and no, we didn’t scale down. We got smarter. In the world of cloud, performance matters — but so does visibility and ownership. Here’s how we approached cost optimization with a FinOps mindset 👇 ✅ Used AWS Cost Explorer + CUR for granular usage insights ✅ Built showback dashboards so teams could see what they owned ✅ Right-sized EC2 instances based on CloudWatch and Compute Optimizer ✅ Switched to Spot Instances for dev workloads and stateless apps ✅ Leveraged Savings Plans + Auto Scaling for sustained usage ✅ Used S3 lifecycle policies to reduce long-term storage costs ✅ Turned on AWS Budgets + alerts for real-time cost awareness The result? 💸 Lower spend ⚡ No loss in performance 📊 More accountability across engineering teams FinOps isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about making engineering financially aware and cloud-native by design. ❇️ Follow me as i will be sharing more details on how to implement this in your dev/test/prod env. #FinOps #CloudCostOptimization #AWS #DevOps #CloudComputing #SavingsPlans #SpotInstances #EC2 #CostExplorer #S3Lifecycle #Showback #CloudStrategy #EngineeringExcellence #Kubernetes #PerformanceOptimization #InfrastructureAsCode #DevOpsCulture #CloudNative #CloudFinancialManagement #CICD #CloudArchitecture #CostReduction #CloudEfficiency #PlatformEngineering #Budgeting #Monitoring #AutoScaling #CloudOps #CostVisibility #SaaSOptimization #AWSBilling #ComputeOptimizer #CloudSavings #TechLeadership #LinkedInTech #CloudGovernance #OperationalExcellence #EfficiencyEngineering