Founder of @CloudWorldModel. Estimate what an infrastructure change does to cost, latency, and errors before you ship it. Ex-Oracle Cloud Engineer.
Stamford, CT
Joined February 2009
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The part of the cloud bill that grows fastest with traffic usually isn't compute, it's egress.
I modeled a small web stack at 3x traffic, and every dollar of the increase was data transfer out. Wrote up how AWS, GCP and DigitalOcean bill it, plus 5 ways to cut it 👇🏾
Egress quietly becomes one of the biggest lines on a small cloud bill.
In our September 2026 pricing snapshot, tripling traffic (100→300 RPS) raised one small web stack's modeled cost ~48% on AWS, ~54% on GCP and ~12% on DigitalOcean, all from egress.
5 ways to cut it, with dated list prices:
cloudworldmodel.ai/blog/clou…
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I’m a big rap fan. The Cloud based startups are like rappers. Rappers are always beefing with each others. The rap “podcaster” though they are all on each others shows getting revenue together. I want CWM to be more like the rap “podcasters” than the rappers.
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Built this so an agent can ask "what breaks if traffic triples?" before touching infra. In this run it was app CPU, not the database, and the post shows exactly where the model says it doesn't know.
What happens to your AWS stack if traffic triples?
We pointed an MCP client at Cloud World Model, simulated ALB + 2× m5.large + db.r5.large MySQL, and went from 200 to 600 RPS:
p99 87 → 422 ms
errors 0 → 10%, all app CPU
MySQL CPU flat at ~18%
modeled cost $0.76 → $1.42/hr
Real tool calls, honest limits:
dev.to/canvascloudai
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We applied to lets say 10 programs this summer. All straight rejections out of those that have responded with exception of Palantir they actually gave us an interview though we didnt get in. Thank you @PalantirTech, appreciate the consideration 🙏🏾
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Question
Kevin the scope and breadth of what you are attempting to do is really aggressive and sufficiently large.
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I know.
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On a different note, I was in Dallas this past weekend and met up with a good friend before heading to the airport. His general point was “are you still sticking to Cloud?” I said, Yes. He, basically said paraphrasing, you need to go with AI instead of Cloud. I basically, responded everybody in the world is looking at the AI angle, why would I want to do that. I’ll only look at AI, as it relates to Cloud (GPUs, etc). The core for us is Cloud.
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The case on why we don’t currently open source our simulation engine. Actually, thought about it quite a bit.
“How would you feel if the only way your kid could learn...”
Marc Andreessen on the case for open source AI:
"How would you feel if the only way your kid could learn about AI is to go to work for one of two companies? Like that, as a parent, I think would probably drive you pretty crazy."
"Whereas in a world of open source, every kid can learn how this stuff works."
"Without open source, AI inevitably centralizes down to one or two companies, or maybe just flat out the government."
"Close your eyes and picture the concept of government sushi. And then keep your eyes closed and picture government AI. How do you feel about that? Open source is the guarantor that that's not the future."
@pmarca
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All these different agentic platforms are aggressive about wanting GitHub access. It’s better to just let one hold the pen and reject the rest. Each one of them have their individual purpose. Otherwise they’ll just all step on each other.
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GitHub is getting pummelled on the daily.
See one of our scenarios that attempts to simulate GitHub August 26th outage as a lesson.
cloudworldmodel.ai/workspace…
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The story for @CloudWorldModel posted back in May. It’s a little bit different today, as I re-read now but not by much.
Ben Horowitz on treating your story as your strategy, and why founders often skip writing it even though it's one of the most important parts of the job:
"The story of the company is also the strategy of the company... In your mind, you're kind of adjusting that strategy a little bit at a time every day. But then a quarter later, it's actually pretty different than what you started with."
"So it's really important that you keep upgrading your story. The articulation of your story. I would definitely recommend it be in written form."
"Something that you can share with everybody in the company, and everybody you're recruiting, everybody you're trying to raise money from, all your constituents, every customer."
"The problem that I think founders have is it doesn't feel like work. Like, 'What are you doing today?' 'I'm working on my story.' That doesn't sound like work."
"Because it doesn't feel like work, people don't do it, but it's probably one of the most important parts of the job."
@bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @Tocelot
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I dislike it when I'm on X via mobile and see an interesting tweet. If I start working on something else and then return to X, the app refreshes, and the interesting tweet is gone forever. 😎
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Kevin Brown retweeted
One of the worst predictors of founder success we've tracked is how well someone pitches; the correlation between pitch quality and outcome was often negative.
Zuckerberg was so awkward in early investor meetings that VCs wondered if he could ever manage anyone, and Larry Page refused interviews and earnings calls for years. Bezos had to pitch 60 different investors to raise his initial $1 million.
Highly articulate people are great with the 30min process of telling a story to strangers, but this is a pretty different skill to building a company. Founders who spend years optimising to be persuasive have often optimised away from the building skills that compound over the 10yrs of execution that come afterwards; it’s incredibly hard to do both well.
The articulate founder will impress your partners but the awkward one will return your fund.
This is why I’m building Cloud World Model. A price sheet tells you the rates. Simulating your traffic helps you see what those rates could mean for your bill before you deploy.
The 33 cloud prices we track stayed flat in September.
But tripling traffic from 100 to 300 RPS raised modeled costs:
AWS: 48%
GCP: 54%
DigitalOcean: 12%
Same fixed infrastructure. All modeled egress.
Model the traffic before you deploy.
cloudworldmodel.ai/blog/clou…
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“I’m not leaving the cloud. I just want to change landlords.” 🤣
The cloud gives you flexibility. How much you keep depends on what you build into the walls.
