Full disclosure: I work for Linode and I am super biased. This is my own opinion etc etc
Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS? Even before I started at Linode, I thought it was terrible. It's extremely, unreasonably pricey. The UI is terrible. Their offerings are availble elsewhere. I started MediaCrush, a now-defunct media hosting website, on AWS. After a while, we switched to dedicated hosting (really sexy servers). We were looking at $250 a month and scaled up to millions of visitors per day! I ran our bandwidth and CPU usage and such numbers through the AWS price calculator a while ago - over $20,000 per month. AWS is a racket. It seems to me like the easiest way to burn through your new startup's seed money real fast.
Edit: not trying to sell you on Linode, just disclosing that I work there. There are lots of options, just do the research before you reach for AWS.
Perhaps the first AWS mistake you might make is... using AWS? Even before I started at Linode, I thought it was terrible. It's extremely, unreasonably pricey. The UI is terrible. Their offerings are availble elsewhere. I started MediaCrush, a now-defunct media hosting website, on AWS. After a while, we switched to dedicated hosting (really sexy servers). We were looking at $250 a month and scaled up to millions of visitors per day! I ran our bandwidth and CPU usage and such numbers through the AWS price calculator a while ago - over $20,000 per month. AWS is a racket. It seems to me like the easiest way to burn through your new startup's seed money real fast.
Edit: not trying to sell you on Linode, just disclosing that I work there. There are lots of options, just do the research before you reach for AWS.