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Skill 24 · Architect For Startups
Subchapter 24.17
references/investor-readiness.mdMarkdown3 KBView on GitHub
Template:
“We built on serverless AWS infrastructure that costs near-zero at current scale and grows linearly with users. Monthly cost is $X, credits give us Y months of runway before infra becomes a line item. Architecture handles 100x current load without changes.”
Don’t say: anything about Kubernetes, microservices, or complex architecture (signals over-engineering). Don’t say “we’ll need to rewrite at scale” (signals poor planning).
Key metrics to have ready:
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| Infra cost / active user / month | Decreasing over time |
| Deploy frequency | Daily or more |
| Uptime (last 90 days) | >99.5% |
| Mean time to recovery | <1 hour |
| Infra cost as % of MRR | <10% for SaaS |
| Red Flag | What It Signals |
|---|---|
| “We’ll need to rewrite at scale” | Poor planning, future capital sink |
| Very high infra cost vs revenue | Capital inefficiency |
| Single engineer who “knows everything” | Bus factor = 1 |
| No uptime data | Operational immaturity |
| Over-engineered for current scale | Wasted capital, slow shipping |
| Vendor lock-in without rationale | Strategic risk (acknowledge trade-offs) |
Don’t show a raw AWS bill with 47 line items.
Do present in business terms:
Monthly Infrastructure: $X,XXX
├── Compute (API + background): XX%
├── Database: XX%
├── AI/ML (Bedrock): XX%
├── Storage + CDN: XX%
└── Other: XX%
Cost per active user: $X.XX/month
Cost as % of MRR: X%
Credits remaining: $XX,XXX (X months at current burn)| Metric | Healthy Range |
|---|---|
| Infra cost per user | $0.50-5.00/month |
| Infra as % of revenue | 5-15% |
| Gross margin (after infra COGS) | >70% |
| Cost scaling factor (% infra growth / % user growth) | <1.0 (sub-linear) |
Have these ready for technical DD: