1. Kuala
Lumpur
Getting to MVP on AWS
Andy Kelk, iProperty Group
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

2. About iProperty Group
! A platform for buying or renting property
! Started in Malaysia; now in Singapore, Indonesia, HK, Philippines
! Advertising solutions for residential and commercial properties from
real estate agents and property developers
! Regularly launching new businesses – new countries / new verticals
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

3. Case Study:
CommercialAsia.com
! In 2011 we launched a new site for commercial property in Asia
! Our 1st site hosted wholly at AWS
! Built from the ground up to work on AWS – EC2 and RDS
! Everything on AWS – Staging, Demo and Production
! Rapid expansion - from 0 to 20,000 monthly visitors 1 month after
launch; 80,000 monthly visitors 1 year later
! After testing different business models we folded commercial listings
back into our main country sites in 2013
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

4. How AWS helped us
! Rapidly built a new site without provisioning new hardware – usual
lead time > 1 month
! RDS let us scale by adding new slaves quickly and easily
! Auto-scaling groups let us add capacity automatically
! Easy redundancy through using multi AZs and ELB
! We could turn off demo and staging environments when not in use
! When we scaled back the site we turned off what we didn’t need –
avoiding significant (~RM25k) equipment write off
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

5. Getting to MVP
(Minimum Viable Product)

6. Traditional World
customer is known
features are known
solution is known

7. Traditional World
is not where we live

8. Most startups
Know the problem, but not the solution
Many don't even know precisely what
problem they solve

9. Lean Startups:
LEARN & ADAPT

10. 1.
Focus on a simple implementation of your idea

11. 1.
Focus on a simple implementation of your idea
2.
Start with a minimal core set of features

12. 1.
Focus on a simple implementation of your idea
2.
Start with a minimal core set of features
3.
Release and listen to your users

13. 1.
Focus on a simple implementation of your idea
2.
Start with a minimal core set of features
3.
Release and listen to your users
Minimum Viable Product

14. MVP
Smallest thing I can do to test my idea?

15. a prototype shouldn't require big investments

16. It should be cheap and validate ideas

18. This Session
From 0 to MVP in 30 minutes

19. What matters most?
Cost of Innovation
Focus

20. « Want to increase innovation?
Lower the cost of failure »
Joi Ito

21. AWS enables you to
Fail Forward
Fail Faster
Fail Cheaper

22. Scale
Product Development
MVP
Time

23. Scale
Innovation & Iteration
MVP
Time

24. Innovation & Iteration
Now: re-written as
app. Photo sharing is just one feature
photo app. Sold to FB
for 1bn
Scale
Started: burbn, location-based mobile
Time

25. Innovation & Iteration
Now: micro-blogging,
podcasts
500M users, >10Bn
valuation
Scale
Started: odeo, site to create & share
Time

26. Innovation & Iteration
Now: raised $42M,
successful. But then game 52…
downloaded 1B times,
25% paid, best sold
game on AppStore
Scale
Started: developed 51 games, none very
Time

27. “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying
will eventually make you look like an overnight
success.”
Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder

28. AWS lowers the cost of Innovation
Scenario
Scale
Small team with initial idea for Mobile app
3 months to get to launch
Unknown customer/problem/solution
No cash….
Time

29. Dev / Test Environment
Average Spend
Scale
$0
p/m
Time

30. Alpha Release
Average Spend
Scale
$15
p/m
Time

31. Beta Release / MVP
Average Spend
Scale
$235
p/m
Time

32. Getting to MVP for $250
Total Spend to MVP
Scale
$250
$0
$15
$235
Time
• 3 months dev/test/release
• Serving Beta customers
• Ready for full production
and scale

33. FOCUS!
Your application
Your business & what makes you unique
Innovation, not undifferentiated heavy lifting
Spending developer time in the right place
Automate as much as you can
(Deep insight alert: Developer Time = Money)
Build apps, not infrastructure

34. "Startups are all about focus. AWS enables focus"
Ray Bradford, Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers

35. “Your users around the world don’t
care that you wrote your own DB”
Mike Krieger, Instagram Cofounder

36. Focus requires Automation
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
AWS
OpsWorks
AWS
CloudFormation
DIY /
On Demand
Automated
resource
management – web
apps made easy
DevOps framework
for application
lifecycle management
and automation
Templates to deploy
& manage templatedriven provisioning
DIY, on demand
resources: EC2, S3,
customer AMI’s, etc.
Convenience
Control

37. DEMO
Your
MVP
on
AWS
Elas3c
Beanstalk

38. What’s
AWS
Elas3c
Beanstalk?

39. We
Create
the
EC2
Instance
You
Focus
on
Developing
Your
App
User
Applica,on
Applica,on
Service
HTTP
Service
Language
Interpreter
Opera,ng
System
Host

40. Flexibility
to
Choose
your
Stack

41. We’re
going
to
build
this…

42. Thank You
aws.amazon.com/start-­‐ups
aws.amazon.com/ac3vate