GoKawiilLast night, I was rejected from yet another pitch night. It was just the pre-interview, and the problem wasn't my product. I already have MRR. I already have users who depend on it every day.
The feedback was simply: "What do you even need funding for?"
I hear this time and time again when I try to grow my ideas. Running lean is in my DNA. I've built tools you might have used, like websequencediagrams.com, and niche products you probably haven't, like eh-trade.ca. That obsession with efficiency leads to successful bootstrapping, and honestly, a lot of VCs hate that.
Keeping costs near zero gives you the exact same runway as getting a million dollars in funding with a massive burn rate. It's less stressful, it keeps your architecture incredibly simple, and it gives you adequate time to find product-market fit without the pressure of a board breathing down your neck.
If you are tired of the modern "Enterprise" boilerplate, here is the exact playbook of how I build my companies to run on nearly nothing.
Use a lean server
The naive way to launch a web app in 2026 is to fire up AWS, provision an EKS cluster, set up an RDS instance, configure a NAT Gateway, and accidentally spend $300 a month before a single user has even looked at your landing page.
The smart way is to rent a single Virtual Private Server (VPS).
First thing I do is get a cheap, reliable box. Forget AWS. You aren't going to need it, and their control panel is a labyrinth designed to extract billing upgrades. I use Linode or DigitalOcean. Pay no more than $5 to $10 a month.
1GB of RAM sounds terrifying to modern web developers, but it is plenty if you know what you are doing. If you need a little breathing room, just use a swapfile.
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