📖 Abstract 📖 This session covers both technical and soft skills required to create and run a side hustle on AWS. It is a postmortem on WarpURL , a product Rehan attempted to side hustle and failed. I will share some of my knowledge and experience on what it takes to side hustle. There will ofcourse be AWS talk as the product was built serverlessly with the AWS CDK, we will cover: Lambda and Lambda@Edge functions that we use for compute . DynamoDB & DynamoDB Global Tables (12 regions) used as a database. Cognito Pool for user management. API Gateway. S3 buckets for storage. SQS for queueing. Lousy code :) as we do some code dives Some soft skills topics will include: Building in Public Payment for South Africans wanting to bill in USD Marketing Everything else required to get to production

1. How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS
Rehan van der Merwe 1

2. > whoami
Rehan van der Merwe
AWS Community Hero | 3 x AWS Certified | Blogger
| Speaker | Meetup Organizer | Coffee Addict
@der_rehan
https://aws-community.africa
https://www.rehanvdm.com

3. Proceedings
• Background on WarpURL
• General points on how NOT to start a
side hustle
• Loose sight of your goals
• Don't validate your product
• DIY everything
• Do marketing after product
• Focus on payment before having users
• Do things that scale
• WarpURL build on AWS
• Architecture & design with the AWS CDK
• Code
• Closing
Rehan van der Merwe 3

4. Background
4

5. What is WarpURL?
• Tag line – The world’s fastest URL Shortener https://warpurl.com
• First attempt to build a side hustle + building in public
Rehan van der Merwe 5

6. Loose sight of your goals
6
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

7. Why are you doing this?
• For the money?
• To grow it into a business for yourself or to sell?
• To just have fun?
• To learn new skills?
Rehan van der Merwe 7
✅
⬛
❌
✅
⬛
⬛

8. Milestones
• Life happens
• Be reasonable with goals
• Have fun
• Don’t lie to yourself
• Over estimate anything you want to do by 50% (IMHO)
Rehan van der Merwe 8

9. Don't validate your product
9
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

10. Audience
• Target a specific audience
• Great if you have skin in the game
• Your network only goes that far
• Do the mom test
Rehan van der Merwe 10

11. Audience
• Build your landing page first, before
building the product – Easier said
than done.
• If similar products exist, then that
idea is “basically” validated, but now
you are now competing with others.
Rehan van der Merwe 11

12. DIY everything
12
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

13. Build vs Buy
Skillset required
• Design, UI/UX
• Backend
• Frontend
• Devops
• SEO
• Usage analytics
• Documentation
• Marketing, blog
• Support platform
• Monitoring
Use free tools like
• Logo generator from namecheap
• Privacy policies + Terms and
conditions - Use templates
• Photoshop express
Rehan van der Merwe 13

14. Code like there is no tomorrow
Product
• Frontend
• Backend
Rehan van der Merwe 14
Website
• Frontend
• Optional(backend)
• Documentation
For both these you would need to
- Do designs
- Architect the solution
- SEO?
- Database design
- Devops for deployment
- Monitor
- Provide support
- Handle payment
- User management system
- Transactional Emails

15. Code like there is no tomorrow
Rehan van der Merwe 15
- Trade-offs
- You can fix bad code but fixing a
bad architecture or database
design is much more difficult.
- Don’t do premature optimization

16. Do marketing after product
16
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

17. No one likes marketing
Rehan van der Merwe 17
• Create the marketing website before
the product
• Get interest while building the
product
• Do not focus on SEO (blogs) at the
beginning
• Social media > Adds
• Your network (only goes so far)
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Outside
• Reddit
• Hacker News
• Don’t even think about Product Hunt
until you have users (IMHO)

18. Focus on payment before having users
18
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

19. Payment solutions for South Africans
• Invoicing in USD
• Higher currency conversions
• More intermediate parties involved
• Higher transaction fees
• Does not handle tax
• Options:
• Paypal => FNB
• Stripe (have to have tax residency in
first world countries)
Rehan van der Merwe 19
• Invoicing in ZAR
• No currency conversions
• Fewer intermediate parties
• Smaller transaction fees
• Likely handles tax
• Options:
• Paystack
• Payfast
• A lot of other decent options

20. PSP vs MOR
Rehan van der Merwe 20
• Payment Service Provider
• Only does the transaction, lower fees
• Does not handle tax
• You still have to do invoicing (they might offer it
at an extra charge)
• Options:
• Paypal
• Stripe
Lemon Squeezy
Paddle
Gumroad
Stripe
• Merchant Of Record
• Handles everything, higher fees (usually)
• Handles tax
• Invoices
• Options:
• Gumroad => PayPal => FNB
• Paddle => PayPal => FNB / Wise => Any
• *Lemon Squeezy => PayPal => FNB / Wise => Any

21. Do things that scale
21
How NOT to start a side hustle on AWS

22. WarpURL build on AWS (Demo)

23. Architecture – Member portal

24. Code - AWS CDK, global latency monitor
Rehan van der Merwe 24

25. CDK Code - Latency monitor
Rehan van der Merwe 25

26. DynamoDB Design – Member portal

27. Architecture – Shortening

28. Pseudo code
• Cloudfront + Lambda@Edge deployed in multiple regions looks
up the long URL from the short URL from the Global DynamoDB
(DDB) table. So everything stays within that region.
• Collect the logs to an S3 bucket that fires into a queue connected
to a Lambda.
• The processing Lambda groups the data and reads existing link
data out of DDB. The new metrics are then added to the existing
ones and written back. This rollup happens on the link, campaign,
user and client rows.
• Multiple Dynamo tables all with single table design, split based on
requirements. Transactions are used to keep the Global Link table
in synch with the Config table.

29. DynamoDB Design - Link

30. Done?
Rehan van der Merwe 31

31. Introducing CloudGlance

32. https://cloudglance.dev

33. Rehan van der Merwe
https://cloudglance.dev

34. 35
https://cloudglance.dev

35. Closing
• Did WarpURL fail? Technically, yes but
no. The skills gained are invaluable
• Just launch
• Do things that don’t scale
• Be realistic with your time and goals
• Don’t let it interfere with your day job,
set boundaries, and be disciplined with
your time
• Building in Public is not for everyone
• Please check out
https://cloudglance.dev
Rehan van der Merwe
@der_rehan
https://www.rehanvdm.com