Approaching where and how to host your software as a young startup is a daunting experience. There is a wide gap between Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers and proper cloud providers, the “best” tooling is always changing, and there are a number of sharp edges where you can easily make a wrong decision that will one day come back to haunt you.

This talk breaks down the decision making process when choosing a provider and then dives deep into how to best leverage that provider to avoid vendor lock-in and build an amazing platform.

Attendees can expect to walk away with the following knowledge:

1. An understanding of what their choices are when first choosing where to host their platform and which one is right for them.
2. How to architect against vendor lock-in.
3. How to leverage the right parts of the cloud to position the startup for rapid growth.

Meet your Speaker - Matt Gowie:

Matt Gowie is an entrepreneur, technical architect, and platform engineer currently based in Boulder, Colorado. He’s the founder of Masterpoint, where him and his team focus on AWS Platform Engineering for a wide range of clients. Matt has over a decade of experience specializing in tech startups, AWS architecture, and cloud infrastructure. With a passion for all things platform engineering, he is an active member of the community, serving as an AWS Community Builder and core maintainer of the largest open source Terraform Module library. When he's not working, you can find Matt rock climbing around Colorado, training for an ultramarathon, or traveling to some remote part of the world.

Find him on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gowiem/