This document discusses lessons learned from building a startup entirely in the cloud on AWS and dealing with an outage in April 2011. The key points are: 1. The importance of scripted repeatability and automation to setup infrastructure in a fault-tolerant and repeatable way. 2. Eliminating single points of failure by distributing servers across zones and enabling failover of load balancers, app servers and databases. 3. The importance of clear communication during an outage to keep stakeholders informed.