The operational cost of running a startup
So what does it actually cost to operate an early stage startup? In reality not that much. Being a solo, bootstrapped founder, the costs are minimal.
Cost breakdown
- Domain name: $8.88 bought at Namecheap. Amortized to $0.74/month
- Servers: 1 x 2GB droplet for the API, and 2x 1GB droplets for various other services. All hosted at DigitalOcean. Total cost $20/month
- Sending mail: Mailgun free tier: $0/month
- Hosted email: Google apps. $4.29/month
- A dedicated desk at my co-working space: $285/month
- Software licenses: $0/month Our entire software stack is opensource
The grand total is: $310.03/month
To start an online software company, you don't actually need a lot of money. Infact the biggest cost is the co-working space, and for office space in London, what I'm paying is cost-effective.
Some of these costs were in GBP, but were converted to USD at an exchange rate of 1.30
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