How a Bootstrapped Hardware Startup Built a WebAssembly Runtime on an $8 VPS to Avoid Cloud Costs
By
marcosscriven
Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked to perfection. Worth every minute at the bakery.
Summary
A bootstrapped hardware audio startup founder, frustrated with expensive hyperscaler cloud services (AWS KMS, Azure) for firmware signing and OTA delivery, built a custom WebAssembly runtime in 5 days. Running on an $8 VPS, the solution became a working multi-tenant sandbox platform, leveraging the founder's embedded security background (ESP32-S3) to create a cost-effective alternative to cloud giants.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledI looked at the hyperscaler options — AWS KMS, Azure signing services — and the pricing made no sense for a bootstrapped company.
Hundreds of dollars a month for workloads that consume almost nothing.
I Built a WebAssembly Runtime in 5 Days Because I Was Tired of Paying for Cloud Run
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