MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on the launch of Octopus Cloud 1.0

Octopus Cloud's engineering journey involved launching a SaaS version of Octopus on AWS, initially running at a loss with high costs and infrastructure challenges, which prompted a comprehensive rebuild. The initial launch aimed to quickly test market demand via a minimally viable product, which revealed strong interest as half of the new trials opted for the cloud version. However, AWS service limits and high costs, including a $100k monthly AWS bill, highlighted the need for a more sustainable approach. The company, bootstrapped and profitable since its inception, decided to redesign Octopus Cloud from the ground up, transitioning from AWS to Azure, adopting Kubernetes, and exploring advanced technologies like Terraform and Azure Functions. This strategic overhaul aimed to reduce costs and scale effectively while leveraging the lessons from v1, emphasizing that the first step was crucial for the insights it provided, ultimately informing a more robust and scalable v2 architecture.