Congratulations! You just closed your funding round. Whether it’s pre-seed, seed or Series A, you now have capital, expectations and a timeline to grow.
Infrastructure might not be the first thing on your mind. It should be the second.
Here’s why: the decisions you make about infrastructure in the first 90 days after funding will determine whether you can scale efficiently or burn cash on tech debt.
We’ve helped dozens of funded startups set up their infrastructure right after raising. Here’s the checklist we use.
Phase 1: Foundation (Week 1–2)
These are the non-negotiables. Get these right first.
Cloud Account Setup
- Dedicated cloud account with proper billing alerts
- Cost allocation tags on all resources (team, project, environment)
- Budget alerts at 50%, 80% and 100% of expected spend
- Multi-factor authentication for all team members
Environment Setup
- Separate staging and production environments
- Infrastructure-as-Code for reproducible deployments
- Automated deployment pipeline (push → test → deploy)
- Environment variables managed securely (not in code)
Security Basics
- SSL/TLS on everything
- Network security groups / firewalls configured
- Secrets management (not environment files on servers)
- Access control with principle of least privilege
Phase 2: Reliability (Week 2–4)
Once the foundation is solid, make it reliable.
Monitoring & Alerting
- Application performance monitoring
- Infrastructure monitoring (CPU, memory, disk, network)
- Error tracking with automatic alerts
- Uptime monitoring from multiple locations
- On-call rotation or partner (like Kernul) handling incidents
Backups & Recovery
- Automated daily database backups
- Backup restoration tested (not just configured)
- Documented disaster recovery procedure
- Cross-region backup storage
Scaling Preparation
- Auto-scaling configured for application tier
- Load balancer in front of application
- Database connection pooling
- CDN for static assets
Phase 3: Optimization (Month 2–3)
Now that things are running reliably, make them efficient.
Cost Optimization
- Right-size all instances based on actual usage
- Reserved instances / savings plans for baseline workloads
- Spot instances for batch processing and training jobs
- Schedule non-production resources to shut down outside hours
- Review and eliminate unused resources monthly
Performance
- Database query optimization
- Application-level caching strategy
- API response time monitoring and optimization
- Content delivery optimization
Documentation
- Architecture diagram (keep it simple and updated)
- Runbooks for common operations
- Incident response procedure
- Onboarding guide for new engineers
Phase 4: Scale (Month 3+)
With a solid, optimized foundation you’re ready to scale.
Advanced Infrastructure
- Multi-region deployment (if serving global users)
- Database read replicas for performance
- Message queues for async processing
- Feature flags for safe rollouts
Compliance (If Needed)
- SOC 2 preparation (if selling to enterprises)
- GDPR compliance (if serving EU users)
- Security audit and penetration testing
- Data processing agreements with vendors
The Numbers
Here’s what this infrastructure typically costs for a seed-stage startup:
| Phase | ⠀ ⠀ | Monthly Cost | ⠀ ⠀ | One-Time Setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation | $500–$2,000 | $5,000–$10,000 | ||
| Reliability | $1,000–$3,000 | $3,000–$8,000 | ||
| Optimization | Net savings of 20–40% | $2,000–$5,000 | ||
| Scale | Varies with traffic | $5,000–$15,000 |
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The ROI is clear: spending $10,000–$20,000 on proper infrastructure setup saves you $50,000+ in the first year through cost optimization, prevented outages and engineering time saved.
Do It Yourself or Get a Partner?
If you have an experienced DevOps/Infrastructure engineer on your team, you can handle most of this internally. If you don’t — and most seed-stage startups don’t — a partner like Kernul can get you through this checklist in 4–6 weeks.
We’ve done it dozens of times. We know the shortcuts, the pitfalls and exactly how to set things up for your specific stack and growth trajectory.
Your investors gave you money to build a product and grow a business. Let us handle the plumbing.