This document provides an overview of how startups can leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build and scale their applications. It discusses how Dropbox, Instagram, and Pinterest were able to achieve massive growth using AWS infrastructure services like EC2, S3, RDS, and auto-scaling. The document also highlights key lessons from each company, such as focusing on the core product, automating operations, and minimizing costs through reserved instances and auto-scaling. Finally, it introduces AWS Activate, a program that provides benefits and credits to help startups get started and grow their business using AWS.

1. Opening Presentation
Startups in the Cloud
Pieter Kemps
Business Development, Startups & Venture Capital
@p_kemps
#AWSstartups

3. “Amazon Web Services is probably the most
important thing that has happened to mobile
and web app developers that the press just
misses. Jeff Bezos has accidentally or maybe
on purpose powered a whole generation of
applications.”
Steve Blank

4. These TW companies…
are getting the same…
DURABILITY
SECURITY
SCALABILITY
AFFORDABILITY
RELIABILITY
as these companies:

5. “Cloud is like a fertilizer that creates Startups”
Eric Ries

6. Idea
MVP
Scale
Profitability
01
02
03
04

7. Idea
MVP
Scale
Profitability
01
02
03
04
Product?
Market?
Profit?
Do we have a product?
Can we ship?
How to develop faster?
Better? Cheaper?
Do people buy?
Do they pay?
Can we scale?
Can we deal with spikes?
Can we monetize?
How to keep costs down?
When can we break-even?
Can we get & stay profitable?

8. Experiment More, Develop Cheaper,
Ship Faster
Add New Dev Environment
Add New Production in US
Add 1,000 Servers
Remove 1,000 servers
aws.amazon.com/managementconsole
Instance Type
M3 Extra Large
1,000
Number of Instances
Availability Zone
US-West-2b
Launch
Infrastructure
in Minutes
Lower Costs of
Innovation
Shorter
Development
Cycles

10. Dropbox Pro Tip #1
Learn early, learn often
http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587

12. Server Backend
Analytics
Desktop Client
API backend
Website controller logic
Runs on a single code base using Python
http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-dropbox-one-million-files-saved-every-15-minu.html

13. AWS supports Python,
Python SDK (Boto),
And many other stacks & tools, SDK’s, API’s

14. Dropbox Pro Tip #2
Not launching = Painful
Not Learning = Fatal
http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587

15. “Code something in a day and release it”
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Automated resource management – web apps made easy
EC2
RDS
Beanstalk deploys
EBS
ELB
You still have control

18. Dropbox Pro Tip #3
“Keep the main thing the main thing”
http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587

19. “Fortunately, we spent almost all our effort
on making an elegant, simple product that
‘just works’ and making users happy”
Drew Houston, Founder, Dropbox
Build apps, not infrastructure,
and leverage the ‘Backbone of Giants’

20. Backbone of Giants
AWS levels the playing field: technology, scale, security, global footprint
Same global
infrastructure as
Same
security as
Same
scalability as

21. Grow faster, reach customers
globally, scale easily
Global Reach
Infinite Scalability
Amazon as a Channel

22. Which company…
14 million users in just over a year
…reached 150 million photos & terabytes of data
…signed up 1.0 million users in 12 hours after launching an Android app
…over 100 million active users in January 2013
…grew to
…with only 3 engineers?

24. Started on single machine
25K signups first day
Friday: moved to EC2
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89025069/Mike-Krieger-Instagram-at-the-Airbnb-tech-talk-on-Scaling-Instagram

25. Scaling
replacing all components of a
car while driving it at 100mph
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89025069/Mike-Krieger-Instagram-at-the-Airbnb-tech-talk-on-Scaling-Instagram

27. Instagram Pro Tip #1
Keep it very simple
http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/13649370142/what-powers-instagram-hundreds-of-instances-dozens-of

28. Staying nimble
= remind yourself of what’s important
“Your users around the world don’t
care that you wrote your own DB”
Mike Krieger, Instagram Cofounder
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89025069/Mike-Krieger-Instagram-at-the-Airbnb-tech-talk-on-Scaling-Instagram

29. Instagram Pro Tip #2
Don’t re-invent the wheel:
Go with proven and solid technologies
http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/13649370142/what-powers-instagram-hundreds-of-instances-dozens-of

30. Instagram is built on AWS global infrastructure
9 Regions
Go Global in Minutes
25 Availability Zones
43 Edge Locations

31. …and leverages many AWS services

32. Customer-driven innovation continues
“I wish I could improve latency to
India”
Jul 28, 2013
Amazon CloudFront and Route 53 Add
India Edge Locations
“If I only I could use Beanstalk for
my Node.js app!”
Mar 11, 2013
Announcing AWS Elastic Beanstalk for
Node.js
“It’s hard to manage my Chef recipes”
Feb 18, 2013
Announcing AWS OpsWorks
“If only AWS could make it easier to
manage the transcoding process”
Jan 28, 2013
Announcing Amazon Elastic Transcoder

33. Instagram Pro Tip #3
Minimize operational burden
instrument everything
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89025069/Mike-Krieger-Instagram-at-the-Airbnb-tech-talk-on-Scaling-Instagram

34. Monitor & Measure Everything
Data is King
Amazon CloudWatch

35. Automate Everything
AWS = true ‘Infrastructure as Code’
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
AWS
OpsWorks
AWS
CloudFormation
Automated resource
management – web apps
made easy
DevOps framework for
application lifecycle
management & automation
Templates to deploy &
manage template-driven
provisioning
Rich API’s – everything can be scripted, versioned, tested and repeated
Control
Convenience
Orchestration framework ranging from macro to granular control

36. Reduce Costs & Grow revenue
Continuous Price
Reductions
Multiple Pricing
Models
Cost Aware
Architecting

38. One of the fastest growing sites in history. Cites AWS for making it
possible to handle growth and scale
http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/5/21/pinterest-architecture-update-18-million-visitors-10x-growth.html

39. • 80 million objects stored in S3
• 410 terabytes of user data
• 70 master databases
• 150 EC2 instances in the web tier
• 90 instances for in-memory caching
• 35 instances used for internal purposes
• Elastic Load Balancing
• Elastic MapReduce (Hadoop)

40. EC2 Instance Hours
S3 Storage Volume
UP
UP
293%
1700%

41. February 2013
48.7 million users globally
Raised $200M (Total = $338M)
$2.5B valuation
How do we keep costs down as we scale up?

42. Pinterest Pro Tip #1
Use Auto-scaling
http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/12/12/pinterest-cut-costs-from-54-to-20-per-hour-by-automatically.html

43. Auto-scaling at Pinterest
Switch off 40% of resources
between peak & off-peak
automatically

44. Pinterest Pro Tip #2
Use “Reserved Instances”
http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/12/12/pinterest-cut-costs-from-54-to-20-per-hour-by-automatically.html

45. AWS offers multiple purchasing models
Free Tier
On-Demand
Reserved
Spot
Get Started on AWS
with free usage & no
commitment
Pay for compute
capacity by the hour
with no long-term
commitments
Make a low, one-time
payment and receive a
significant discount on
the hourly charge
Bid for unused capacity,
charged at a Spot Price
which fluctuates based
on supply and demand
For POCs and
getting started
For spiky workloads,
or to define needs
For committed
utilization
For time-insensitive or
transient workloads

46. • Auto-scaling – automated shut down of 40% of instances off-peak
• Reserved Instances – to save on EC2 for base workload

47. Peak: $52/h
Off-peak: $15/h
Savings/h:
71%

48. Why Dropbox, Instagram and Pinterest use AWS
Developer Centric
Backbone of Giants
Winning thru Innovation

49. AWS supports startups all over the world
announcing
AWS Activate

50. AWS Activate
Packages & Benefits
Self-Starter Package
Startups doing it on their own
• AWS Free Usage Tier
• 1 month Developer Support
• "AWS Technical Professional"
training + 1 self-paced lab
• Startup Forum
• Special 3rd party offers
Portfolio Package
Startups in select accelerators
• AWS Promotional Credit
• Business Support 1+ month
• "AWS Technical Professional" &
"AWS Essentials" training with
class labs + 4 self-paced labs
• Startup Forum
• Special 3rd party offers

51. AWS Activate
Sign up Now
as
aws.amazon.com/ac+vate