The Chronicles of Serverless Sam: Vol. 1 - The Shift of the Startup

Introduction

The world of startups is changing. New opportunities have arisen in the last ten years that allowed small company growth in ways that didn't seem possible before. Capital became easier to obtain, technology became easier to scale and commercial property became less of a necessity. But we are on the cusp of a new wave of further advancements. New cloud services and architectures are making software easier to create, deploy and scale - with methods of paying for these services that better suit startups.

Those close to me in my personal and professional life know I just left a job. I was perfectly happy and thriving in the role, but I wanted to pursue a career/personal goal of mine - to start and maintain a relatively "risk-free" startup with an engineering team of one (me) whilst travelling the world.

The term is to be a "digital nomad" and I'll be documenting this journey in fortnightly publications over the next 10 months. Most of the content will detail technical methods of optimising output whilst in remote locations and producing business value as efficiently as possible, but unfortunately my first publication needs to be business-focused to give the whole project some context.

Why Am I Doing This?

The short answer is because I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset. For example I was funding my annual FIFA video game purchase by selling sweets at school from a young age (please don't tell my teachers). I developed into a "jack of all trades, master of none" software engineer in my previous role and versatility is a handy attribute to have when you are the only engineer in a team. Back-end services, web design, app development, cloud architecture - I will need to do it all.

Why Am I Doing This Right Now?

Young people and how they spend their money has been a hot topic in recent times. Apparently we aren't buying houses due to our craving for avocado on toast for breakfast every morning. As somebody that detests avocado, I was lucky enough to avoid that bullet and save enough to consider getting on the property ladder. The only problem being that with a mortgage, I can say goodbye to any financial risk of any kind. So I decided now is the right time to attempt my own startup, and I may as well "do it right" and travel at the same time.

Why Am I Doing This Right Now? (A Technology Viewpoint)

Let's take a break away from business for a moment and talk tech - The last few years have seen a real turning point for cloud computing. I was lucky in my previous role to be exposed to all the pros and cons of cloud vs on-premise software in a large enterprise which I could talk about for days. I now have enough of a grasp on cloud computing - it's architecture and implementation - to create an end-to-end solution myself.

Serverless computing is an aspect that has my caught my interest in particular. I wont go into the details now, let's save that for the next publication (spoiler alert) but I can speak briefly on why now is a good time to work with it.

Cloud platforms themselves are starting to see the power and potential of serverless cloud computing. It was the prime focus of the AWS Ignite conference this year and as the saying goes: “If you build it, he will come”. So I expect this effort from cloud platforms will soon transcend into a desire for serverless cloud computing from enterprise customers of all sizes. The only problem is migrating from monolithic legacy applications to a serverless solution is a "ball ache". The two architectures couldn't be more different and gaining experience now may be very handy in the near future. 

Have you noticed a similar scenario in today's world with migrating on-premise applications to the cloud? Even when it is as simple as lift-and-shifting to the cloud then tweaking the architecture - if you know how to orchestrate such a process - you are wanted by almost every company under the sun.

The Shift of Startups

There aren't many things you specifically remember from school, but oddly enough there are always one or two lessons/teachings that stick with you for some reason, right? For me, one of those was CELL - a mnemonic depicting the four requirements of any business to succeed (thank you Mr Cornall of my year 10 Business Studies class) - standing for capital, enterprise, labour and land. As the world of business and technology has developed over the last decade, these unquestioned requirements have been challenged and their hurdles lowered. The two I'm going to dig into in particular are capital and land.

Capital - Between 1933 and 2012 startups were not allowed to publicly declare that they had an investment opportunity. Most companies relied on word-of-mouth within certain social circles in order to get themselves off the ground with seed investment. In 2012, Obama signed the JOBS act into law, legalising general solicitation. With this, crowd-investing was born. It became easier to seek investment as a business from any background and the pool of potential investors snowballed. It's worth noting that crowdfunding services were already legal, and the fact that companies like Kickstarter (founded in 2009) were already bringing casual investment/funding into the mainstream before the JOBS act was passed only aided casual investment traction. (For reference, the difference between crowdfunding and crowd-investing is that you receive purely company equity from crowd-investing but receive material goods/services (or nothing at all) from crowdfunding).

For further details on the history of investment and the impact of the JOBS act see this Forbes article (ignoring the plug of the writer's own crowdfunding company) and this legal resource.

Land - We all know remote working is becoming more popular. Advancements in networking, broadband coverage and virtualisation are the enablers of this trend. Citrix, a market leader in networking and virtualisation (queue the plug for my ex-employee) believe that 50% of the entire workforce will be working remotely in some form by 2020 (see the video below). To add to this, statistics suggest that "regular working from home" has increased by 140% from 2005 to 2018. To take this trend one step further, companies are offering more job roles that are entirely remote. What that means for certain startups is that there is less of a requirement for commercial property. Taking a software company as a "completely random and unbiased" example, you can hire a global team of employees/contractors without the need for colocation. Aside from the benefit of not needing property, the business can also gain 24/7 production coverage if the team comprises of engineers from all geos.

My Plan for a Shifting Startup

So clearly I want to take the facts and trends mentioned in the previous section one step further.

Capital - It is easier than ever to reach out to potential investors to get the money you need as a startup. But what if you could skip this step all together? A key benefit of serverless computing is that you are "charged as you consume" - similar to a pay-as-you-go phone contract. That means as a startup, you only pay as you earn (assuming increased traffic to your services increases your revenue). As long as your solution is well architected and you have a viable business model, the costs of running your tech will scale as your revenue scales, minimising risk and removing the need for investment in that area of the business initially. 

I am fortunate that I have direct contact with my initial pool of customers too. Meaning there is no need for investment in marketing either. So with no investment required for initial marketing and running my tech, I intend to set up and maintain this business for it's first year with only minimal self-investment for developer licences etc. My first year may even raise enough capital to allow me to expand into other markets in year two without external investment.

Enterprise - Of course I need a viable business plan to succeed. There is a chance the business implodes and I need to look for a "real" job in 10 months time. However, my career should have been propelled ahead of the trajectory it was travelling on before leaving my job (based on the new skills I will acquire). So there is no downside personally to taking on this challenge.

Labour - I'm fortunate that I have the technical skills to build my desired end-to-end solution myself. The only issue is that I am building my desired end-to-end solution myself. I don't want to use the term "cutting corners" because that has negative connotations. So instead, I'm going to be "optimising the business value I produce through efficiency-based decision-making". Better? As I execute the above statement, I'll detail in publications what decisions I make and whether they were a success.

The first decision I made was to use a serverless architecture. Aside from the benefit that there is little/no cost for myself until the tech is being consumed, AWS manages my service instances and their scaling. Meaning there is less for me to do, and I can focus on writing the code needed.

Land - I mentioned that nomads are becoming the new norm. All I essentially need is my laptop and Wi-Fi. However I do foresee occasional development without internet access denting my productivity. I hope to mitigate these effects and document how I can still develop offline in future publications.

Conclusion

So now you know my motivation for going against the grain and trying something that few do. I have minimised the risk to almost zero and it crosses off one of my life goals. Software is easier than ever to create, deploy and scale. Gone are the days of needing a large engineering team, so long as the right decisions are made at the start of a product's lifecycle. Serverless computing could potentially be the next phase of the cloud computing movement. The cloud platforms themselves are convinced and soon their customers will be too. I'm planning to get a head start on the competition, are you? *Mic drop*

Follow me on Twitter (@Serverless_Sam) if you are interested in my journey.