> Why would any startup shackle themselves to AWS or any cloud when it's not portable?
Depending on the startup, that may make sense if it allows for fast iteration.
If a startup is trying to achieve product market fit, having a huge AWS bill is a good problem to have, since it means the product is actually successful.
Only servers used for client requests. Dev and integration environments but esp data crunching can be a lot more expensive than serving web requests. And they're hard to keep cheap if you scaling is easy.
