From YC to AWS: Porter simplifies infrastructure for scaling startups

Early-stage startups rely on cloud infrastructure as a foundation for growth, but many lack the resources to manage it effectively. Automated DevOps platforms or PaaS exist, but as companies scale, what once enabled fast deployment can become restrictive, driving up costs and limiting flexibility. Many teams find themselves caught between ease of use and control. Porter, a pioneering Y Combinator (YC) startup, is helping startups simplify DevOps while maintaining ownership of their infrastructure.

Together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Porter is redefining how startups adopt and scale on cloud infrastructure. The company combines AWS services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) with a streamlined developer experience that removes the operational burden of managing complex systems without sacrificing control.

Ease of use without giving up the keys

Founded in 2020 by CEO Justin Rhee, Porter simplifies how startups deploy and manage applications in any cloud, allowing them to scale effortlessly without DevOps overhead. The platform handles everything from infrastructure setup to CI/CD and autoscaling, helping startups focus on their product while building their business on battle-tested, enterprise-grade infrastructure. “Like many early-stage startups, we pivoted around before keying in on what we’re doing now,” says Rhee. “During that time, we were spending a lot of time managing our own infrastructure and asking ourselves if we needed to hire engineers to do this for us.” That experience led the Porter team to become the company they are today.

While some startups may lack the technical knowledge to manage their own infrastructure, most Porter customers simply have more pressing priorities. “There’s actually an inverse correlation where our users with the most DevOps experience, who have set up and managed infrastructure at very large companies, are the ones most likely to recognize the benefits of using a service like ours,” says Rhee. “Instead of hiring DevOps engineers or consultants, they can use Porter in combination with their cloud provider of choice.”

“Unlike our competitors, we don’t resell infrastructure at a marked-up cost,” says Rhee. On Porter, ease of use and ownership of infrastructure aren’t mutually exclusive and there’s no trade-off between simplicity and control. Alternative automated DevOps solutions have a ceiling for most startups because, once a company reaches a certain scale, control over infrastructure becomes increasingly important. “For startups of a certain scale, all roads lead to a hyperscaler like AWS,” says Rhee. “Inevitably, there’s a time when you need that ownership for cost, performance, and reliability reasons.”

Building in a bubble and playing the long game

Fresh out of school, the Porter founding team participated in YC’s S20 batch. “It was the ideal way for us to gain exposure to other startups. We were constantly talking to other founders within this very densely connected community,” says Rhee. “Y Combinator’s motto is to make something people want and the advantage of building a dev tool for startups is that our audience was right there.” But Porter’s YC experience was unique from the norm, as it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced all aspects of the incubator online. “Everything was remote, including Demo Day,” says Rhee. “It definitely changed the dynamic a bit. You don’t get that same in-person energy, but it actually made it easier in to connect with more people because everything was happening online.”

“Demo Day itself was a pretty surreal experience,” says Rhee. “You’re presenting in front of hundreds if not thousands of investors and it’s the culmination of everything you’ve been working on during the batch. At the same time, there was a realization that Demo Day is not the finish line, it’s just the beginning of the next phase. We got a lot of inbound interest but ultimately you still have to go out and build something people want. It’s exciting and validating but reinforces the fact that this is just step one, and there’s a lot more work to do.”

“It’s a long game,” says Rhee. “As a founder, it’s important to experience how brutally hard it can be. You’re trying a lot of things, building pain tolerance and acquiring scar tissue as you try and stitch it all together.” While Porter was always building products in the infrastructure space, but with every pivot, the team accrued knowledge, gained a deeper understanding of what their customers wanted, and brought themselves closer to their current offering. “I don’t know if there’s a world where we would have converged on our current position without having had those initial missteps,” says Rhee.

A collaboration that serves every startup

In the years following YC, the Porter team began collaborating with AWS. “We were helping a lot of customers migrate off of services like Heroku to AWS and it was while speaking to the AWS account managers overseeing those migrations that we realized there was this obvious synergy between both companies,” says Rhee. Fast-forward to today and the Porter platform utilizes multiple AWS services, including Amazon EC2 and Amazon EKS for compute and container orchestration with Kubernetes. The company uses Amazon RDS as its primary database solution as well.

Porter is also helping its customers take advantage of AWS Activate, a dedicated program supporting more than 350,000 startups with proven expertise, go-to-market opportunities, and funding in the form of Activate Credits. Since Porter manages infrastructure in customer’s cloud accounts, startups part of the AWS Activate program can use their AWS credits to cover the cost of their compute while retaining PaaS-like developer experience through Porter.

During their time in YC, the Porter founding team made use of these credits themselves. “These programs are extremely helpful for early-stage startups where there is a lot of uncertainty but so much potential upside if the business succeeds,” says Rhee. “What can get in the way of companies using these credits is the fact that there’s a lot to familiarize yourself with on AWS which can lead to fear of overhead. One of our big pushes to customers is helping them take advantage of this really generous offer by simplifying all of that for them.”

Managing infrastructure for tomorrow’s giants

Looking ahead, Porter is continuing to help startups hone their products without expending unnecessary resources managing infrastructure. “In the immediate and long term, our goal is to continue scaling with our users,” says Rhee. “Because we serve startups, we’re in this fortunate position where companies that started their journey on Porter are now employing hundreds of people and we’re powering their infrastructure. We’re excited to grow together and our hope is that they will become the next generation of public companies while we automate DevOps work and simplify the management of their infrastructure.”

As Porter progresses on its own journey, the company’s collaboration with AWS remains constant. “AWS is one of those rare companies that truly serves everyone from the largest enterprises on the planet to small startups,” says Rhee. “We are a series A startup of around 20 engineers, and yet there is a genuine willingness to partner with us and serve others like us.” He continues: “They are an absolute exception in that regard. They care deeply about working with startups. It’s part of the company’s DNA and how they grew in the first place and it continues to be both surprising and impressive.”