When you see startups blow millions a year on AWS spend because its "easy", when you could do the same on dedicated hardware for 1/10th or even 1/100th the price, it always shocks me.
Yes, queue the comments about "Total cost of ownership", past the point where you cant afford an OPs person(s) (which you will eventually need for AWS anyways) AWS is a money-sucking black hole.
It's not about the hardware. It's about what happens when it breaks--which it will--and when you need stuff you can't reliably build off the top of your head--which you will.
The axe you're grinding is profoundly weird, and indeed a large part of my business is because the stuff we build is extremely cost-competitive with dedicated hardware. Difference being that I can open up the console and start shooting servers and nothing breaks. You're not saying the same with the overwhelming majority of naive "dedicated hardware" deploys, especially at the levels of skill and expenditure that small companies can employ.
I don't see anything "profoundly weird" about it (a bit specific, maybe, given the rest of the conversation).
You're right, of course, about naive deployments. But it just isn't that hard to build reliable systems, assuming some experience. And if you're doing anything more interesting than pretty CRUD forms (say, atypical storage or bandwidth requirements), DYI becomes much cheaper, fast.
To reiterate, yes, you need someone who knows what they're doing on the systems end. But you will anyway at some point, and making that hire earlier can pay for itself.
I am a huge proponent of self-hosting, but there's other considerations when it comes to doing something like cloud - namely, CAPEX vs OPEX (Capital Expense vs. Operating Expense).
Having your own equipment is a CAPEX and investors don't like to see those on a balance sheet at all due to various accounting reasons. Mostly its seen as a burden. Cloud is an OPEX and investors seem to prefer renting to owning.
Personally I don't understand why spending 3x more is more attractive to investors, but often the technical reason being right is superseded by the business logic.
Yes, queue the comments about "Total cost of ownership", past the point where you cant afford an OPs person(s) (which you will eventually need for AWS anyways) AWS is a money-sucking black hole.