<i>This can significantly increase the startups runway, by lowering the operational costs.</i><p>There is an old saying in business: &quot;overhead walks on two legs.&quot;  People are expensive; everything else is cheap in comparison.  This is particularly true for most software companies, where payroll (and other expenses directly sensitive to number of employees) typically dominates every other expense.<p>There are software companies which do $100 million a year in revenue on $50k a year in infrastructure costs.  Bloat that crazily for a B2C startup making, let&#x27;s say, generous time-to-market and inhouse-expertise-required tradeoffs.  Even if you&#x27;re spending $50k a month on Amazon, shaving off half of that buys you 1~2 extra FTEs.