Serverless Days Ahmedabad 2023 - This presentation is mainly to highlight how Serverless Technologies can be used by Startups effectively in their early stage, where focus is on the time to market vs infrastructure engineering.

1. How Early-Stage Startups Can Thrive
with the AWS Serverless Ecosystem
Dhaval Nagar
AWS Hero, AWS SME, 12x AWS Certified

2. Introduction
● 12x AWS Certified 🎖
● AWS Certification SME - Associate 🏆
● AWS Hero - 2020 ☁💡
● AWS User Group Lead - Surat 💡
● Founder @ APPGAMBiT, AWS Consulting Partner 󰠻
● Practicing Barista ☕
First Physical
Server Setup
2005
Started Using
Linode
2010
Started Using
AWS,
DigitalOcean
2014
First Lambda
Setup
2015

3. Rapid Deployment
● Fast deployment isn’t just about the code;
the dependencies has to work as well
● Steep learning curve for mastering multiple
technologies like Database, Auth, APIs, etc
● Identifying efficient methods for the
deployment process is essential for staying
competitive.
Early-Stage Startup Challenges
Small Team
● EC2 or Beanstalk often seems like a simple
solution
● Manually managing servers can require
dedicated personnel, adding to costs.
High Cost Of Operational
Resources
● While smaller teams are nimble, they have a
greater workload and fewer hands to
distribute tasks.
● Automation and smart tooling are essential
for smaller teams
Rapid Development
● Build From Scratch vs Utilising Pre-built Services
● Faster Time to Market
● Decision Paradox

4. Front-End AuthN and AuthZ
API Management
Runtimes and Compute
Database Storage
Integrations
General Application Architecture
Web App Mobile App Desktop / CLI /
Others
Users Role/
Permissions
Account Detail
Service Endpoint Routing HTTPS Caching Req. Validation
Monolithic Micro-service External Queue Pub/Sub Workflow
SQL NoSQL Purpose-Built Objects Files

5. https://medium.com/a-cloud-guru/serverless-the-future-of-software-architecture-d4473ffed864 / Oct 2015

6. Don’t Repeat Yourself
○ Always tempting to Build vs Use
○ Time consuming and labor
intensive exercise to build
complex features
○ Time To Market is one of the
most essential parameter
Vendor Lock-in is manageable
○ Every architectural decision
inherently imposes some form of
lock-in, be it in terms of
technology, skill set, or
infrastructure
○ Trading flexibility and speed of
development with time

7. Use Cases
Online Training
Platform
Food Order
Processing
Developer
Security Tool

8. A Cloud Guru - Application Architecture (2015)

9. FoodHub - Order Processing At Scale
● 4th Largest Food
Ordering
Company in UK
● UI applications for
Users and
Restaurant
Owners
● Heavy Order
Processing in
patterns of Day
and Time
● 63 Million Orders
Processed in 2021
Front-end
Back-end
CloudFront S3
Amplify AppSync Lambda DynamoDB
Customer
Restaurant

10. Snyk - Vulnerability Scanning at Scale
● Developer Security
platform
● In Top 20 of Forbes
Cloud 100 Companies
2023
● Native Integration with
AWS CodePipeline
CodePipeline
S3
API Gateway DynamoDB
Step
Functions
EventBridge
Lambda

11. Key Benefits
● Faster Time to Developement
● Scalable and Reliable Services
● Pay as You Use
● Infrastructure as Code
● Event-Driven Architecture

12. Not One-Size-Fits-All, But Still Invaluable
I want to acknowledge and highlight the point that Serverless may
not be suitable for certain use-cases, but it can still co-exist with
other architectures, offering a best-of-both-worlds approach.
For example, a startup specializing in Machine Learning use case
can still leverage serverless for non-ML tasks like User Auth,
Database, Storage, Communication, etc.

13. Next Generation of Tools
AWS S3 CloudFront | Google Buckets | Cloudflare | Vercel | Netlify
Front-end Cloud
Lambda | Cloud Functions | Cloudflare Workers | Hasura | Vercel Edge Functions | Supabase |
Google Cloud Run | AWS App Runner | Google App Engine
Compute Services
DynamoDB | Firebase | Hasura | Prisma | PlanetScale | MongoDB Atlas | Aurora Serverless |
Neon | Xata | Upstash | Contentful
Serverless Datastore
SAM | Serverless Framework | Terraform | Ampt | SST.dev
Development Tools

14. Key AWS Services
● S3 / CloudFront
● Cognito
● Lambda / App Runner / Fargate
● API Gateway / AppSync
● Step Functions
● EventBridge / SQS / SNS / Kinesis
● DynamoDB / Aurora Serverless

15. Best Practices & Pitfalls
● Choosing the Right Services
○ Deciding between one cloud, multi-cloud vs usecase-specific services
○ Functions vs Container
● Cost Monitoring
○ It’s cost efficient but not cheap
○ One bad message in a mis-configured SQS can run havoc
● Security Concerns
○ Serverless or not, this should still be a valid concern for most startups
● State Management
○ Everything is distributed and decentralised
○ Some of the traditional development practices may not be suitable
● Testing and Debugging
○ It’s still hard to emulate cloud resources for local development
● Monitoring and Observability
○ Lot of tools, but still evolving space

16. By providing a simplified programming environment, serverless
computing makes the cloud much easier to use, thereby attracting
more people who can and will use it.
A Berkeley View on Serverless Computing, 2019

17. Thank You!