Thought I'd save money hosting my own demo server for investor meetings, now I'm out $400 and two weekends

Wade Anderson · 2026-10-08T00:05:04.788211+00:00

I run a small SaaS startup here in Austin and got tired of paying $80 a month for cloud hosting, so I set up a cheap server at my apartment to demo our product to investors. Two days before a big pitch on West 6th, the power blinked during a storm and the box wouldn't boot because the boot drive died. I spent $400 on a replacement drive and a UPS, plus a full weekend rebuilding the environment I'd already had working in the cloud. The lesson wasn't about saving money, it was that your demo setup is not the place to get clever. Anyone else tried to run production-ish stuff from their place and get burned?

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Thought I'd save money hosting my own demo server for investor meetings, now I'm out $400 and two weekends | Austin Tech Business - Thought Shares