Really loved working on this with you, and I'm excited to see what you come up with now that you have a much better understanding of AWS. Congrats on the re-launch!
When engaging a super qualified expert like this, say in devops, what levels of interaction are available? For example, is is possible to get the one hour consult that points the way and mentions the land mines to avoid, with maybe some template files, or is it only the complete package where the expert does everything from soup to nuts? Is it cost effective for an early-stage venture to use the rockstar for something like this? Would someone like this only apply after product-market fit?
Well, it depends on the application. Most people think about scaling far too early, and the same applies to configuration management. I am a fan of shortcuts, early and often... worry about things when you have things to worry about.
That being said, making some easy architecture choices early on can have an enormous effect on your sanity. It is probably worth it to bring someone in to hint you in the right direction after you have a prototype to show and have already started to make choices. This is basically where I helped Adrian.
If your app is struggling under success, you are ideally in a better position financially than most startups are at the beginning. This is when you bring someone in for longer term engagements, or potentially when you hire someone to work on this full time.
I think you are hitting on something that is really a need in the market right now. When you don't need a consultant, and you need 30-90 minutes of "how do I do this?" Q&A, it is hard to figure out who to talk to.
From my perspective, it is hard to find those engagements. I do a sad majority of my time in the sales side of things. Recently, I spoke to some folks at 10xmanagement and Adrian pointed me to anyfu, both of which are approaching this problem but in slightly different manners.
Lastly, you don't want the soup to nuts guy. This is your app, and if you aren't deeply involved with what is going on with it, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage post consulting engagement.
I've often gone on Quora or Stack Exchange to answer questions about scaling or stack design, but the questions (and answers) are often very simplistic, or the questions are so specific that I'd need to spend hours answering.
If there was a place I could go to get some cash for my time answering these questions, I'd certainly be more inclined to spend the time to do so thoroughly.
