Project summary

Punkolink is a cloud infrastructure provider for small teams who find hyperscalers (AWS, GCP) too complex and expensive, and bare-metal providers (Hetzner, OVH) too raw — because building services on top of raw infrastructure is not their core expertise.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The 9-month research phase tests one core hypothesis: there is a viable business in providing cloud infrastructure to small teams underserved by hyperscalers and bare-metal providers. If validated through unit economics, Punkolink develops into a full-fledged business.

Achieving this goal involves three parallel tracks, the objective of which is to achieve plausible and satisfactory results across a number of specific metrics.

Production of substantive engineering articles on the project’s blog, which I write myself. This is a strategic positioning effort that cannot be delegated at this stage: these articles build long-term credibility and lay the foundation for SEO.

Maintaining a meaningful presence in technical communities such as CTO Craft or themed Reddit threads by monitoring relevant discussions and interacting with users. This area requires human attention. At a time when the tech industry is flooded with AI automation, communicating with the community through real people will be what sets us apart from the vast number of other new startups. The measure of success is recognition as substantive community members after 6 months.

An extension of the second track: the gradual expansion of the professional network. The main goal is not direct sales outreach rather, it is to build a community of people who understand what Punkolink does. I expect the first users to come from this network.

How will you know it worked?

Success is defined as the ability to acquire 3 or more profitable customers per month by the 6th to 9th month. I define a profitable customer as one who generates at least $50 per month.

LTV:CAC ratio—3:1

Payback period for customer acquisition costs—6–12 months

Average revenue per customer—$50–300 per month

Customer retention rate—above 50% after 6 months

These targets are based on data obtained from an analysis of hyperscaler companies (CAC $200–$500, ARPU $50–$50,000 per month) and providers of “bare-metal” solutions (CAC $50–$200, ARPU $5–$500 per month). The customer lifetime in both segments is typically 1–3 years.

How will this funding be used?

Basic living expenses (food, apartment rental, utilities): $800/month — $7200 for 9 months. This allows me to leave full-time employment and focus entirely on the project.

Community manager: $800/month × 9 months = $7,200. Full-time role for systematic presence in technical communities (CTO Craft, relevant Reddit threads and other relevant areas), monitoring discussions and interacting with users. This is inbound channel execution that cannot be done solo at scale while maintaining the content and product work.

Operating expenses (including reserve capacity, testing, and development tools): $200/month — $1800 for 9 months.

Total budget: $16200.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Right now I'm working on my own. I’m an engineer specializing in cloud infrastructure, primarily working in Rust on Linux platforms. My background includes work at Kyivstar (Ukrainian national telecom, essentially nationwide-scale infrastructure) and currently at a commercial data center in Kharkiv, where I lead a small team of infrastructure engineers. I’ve also worked on several small startups in close collaboration with their founders — experience that gave me a deep understanding of the mistakes early-stage projects commonly make.

I plan to hire a second person to serve as community manager if I secure funding.

Working with the community is an ongoing process that requires a significant number of person-hours. That is why this work has been assigned to a separate role, which will be filled by a full-time community manager. This will allow me to focus on the technical part of work, customer acquisition, onboarding, and support.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

A project is considered a failure if it fails to attract 3 profitable customers per month or if the cost of acquiring such a customer exceeds $600.

These figures were chosen because, with the actual cost of one month of work at $1800 (Payment for living expenses, the work of a second employee, and project-related costs for a month), they provide the minimum break-even point needed to keep the project afloat.

In the event the project fails, the conclusions drawn during the research phase will be published as a case study on what works and what doesn’t in the field of client acquisition for boutique cloud environment management services. The project is officially closed; no further use of resources is planned.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

No monetary funding has been raised over the past 12 months. The project is funded through my day job at a commercial data center.

AWS Activate provided $1,000 in infrastructure credits, which are currently being used to run the platform. Also Stripe provided £368.91 in payment processing credits.