Every startup I audit wastes 30–40% on AWS
Your portfolio is burning $9K+/mo on AWS nobody audited.
One engagement. Permanent savings. No savings? No fee.
I read the architecture, find the mismatch between tech and business, and tell you exactly what to change — while their engineering team stays focused on shipping. 🚀
David Plappert
Senior AWS Architect · 19 years ☕
🗓️ Book Your Free Intro Call
with David Plappert · 19 years on AWS
Trusted by teams at
The math on a typical portfolio company 🧮
$25K/mo AWS spend · 36% waste found
$108K
Annual savings found
$81K
Max total fee (15% + 60%)
$108K
Saved every year after — forever 🎉
Year 1 net: $27K kept · Year 2+: full $108K/yr goes straight to runway
How it works for portfolio companies
Three steps. Less effort than reading a pitch deck. 📄
STEP 1
You forward one email
Introduce David to your portfolio company's CTO. That's it. Lowest effort, highest ROI move you'll make this quarter. ⌨️
STEP 2
David audits the account
Read-only access, 5–10 business days. Full report: every waste item, dollar amounts, architecture fixes. The kind of due diligence AWS hopes nobody does. 🔍
STEP 3
Savings hit the P&L
Your portfolio company keeps the savings forever. One-time fee based on verified savings. No recurring costs. No "enterprise plan." 🎉
💸
Pay on results
No retainer. No hourly. You pay a percentage of verified savings — if I don't find waste, you owe nothing. Wild concept for consulting, I know. 🤷
⏱️
9-month ROI
Most engagements pay for themselves within 9 months. After that, every dollar saved goes straight to runway. CFOs love this. Investors love it more. 😏
🔁
No recurring fees
I'm not another SaaS on your portfolio's credit card. One engagement, permanent savings. The only thing that recurs is the money your companies keep. Every. Single. Month.
Your portfolio company is a good fit if… 🎯
Not every company needs this. Here's who gets the most value.
Spending $5K+/mo on AWS
Engineering team is too busy shipping to optimize infra
AWS bill has been growing unsupervised since launch
Nobody on the team has done a cost audit in the last 12 months
What people say after working with David
🧠
"David is a dev genius."
VP of IT
Fortune 100
💬
"David responds quickly and makes sure to explain things as best as possible."
CTO
Marketing Firm w/ $25M Annual Revenue
🎯
"David's a commando. He is fast and efficient at getting results."
CTO
Non-Profit w/ $10M Annual Budget
📋 See It In Action
10 years. 3 state healthcare exchanges. 6 AWS accounts. Here's the full story.
EC2 → Microservices: 30% Cloud Savings Across 3 State Exchanges
How David led DevOps for DC Health Link, the MA Health Connector, and more — migrating from monolithic EC2 to Lambda, ECS, and EKS while maintaining HIPAA compliance and 24/7 uptime.
30%
Cost reduction
6
AWS accounts
HIPAA
Full compliance
🕵️ What I Find in Every Portfolio Company
Decisions that made sense at the time. That time was 2021. It's not 2021 anymore.
🔒 Your Data. My Paranoia.
I've worked with organizations that handle the most sensitive data in the country. Your AWS account is in good hands. Careful, experienced, slightly paranoid hands. 🫡
🏥
HIPAA
Protected health information? Been there, secured that.
🏛️
DC Health Link
Health exchange data for the nation's capital.
💳
PII & eCommerce
Customer data, payment data, the stuff that keeps you up at night.
📋
IRS Pub 1075
Federal tax information. The government trusted me. You can too.
🛡️ How access works
- ✅Read-only IAM role — scoped policy, your team provisions it. I can look but I literally cannot touch. 👀
- ✅No data extraction — I audit infrastructure and architecture, not your application data.
- ✅SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP environments — I've worked inside all of them. I know the rules. 🏗️
- ✅Access revoked when we're done — you control it the entire time. Delete the role and I'm gone.
🛡️
FREE Security Audit
Normally 10% of AWS annual spend. Free for the next 21 days.
Misconfigs, public S3 buckets, overprivileged IAM roles — the stuff that keeps CISOs up at night.
Connect with me on LinkedIn 👋 Who's poking around my AWS account?
I'm David Plappert — an actual human being with 19 years of AWS experience who will personally dig through your account, read your architecture, and understand your business. 🍱 Not an AI-generated summary. Not a dashboard with traffic lights. Not a junior analyst following a checklist. Me. On a call. With opinions. And a mildly aggressive sense of humor.
I build and run production serverless SaaS at Fortune 100 scale — Lambda, API Gateway, S3, SES, the whole buffet. I even have a U.S. patent on cloud infrastructure (because apparently I don't spend enough time with AWS already). I know where AWS hides the markup because I've been paying it myself for years. Most cloud cost optimization tools tell you what you're spending. I tell you why your tech doesn't match your business — and I make it not just cheaper, but better. 🎯
Should that EC2 fleet be Lambda functions? (Probably.) Does that RDS instance need to be that big? (It does not.) Is your architecture built for a business model that pivoted two years ago? (Almost certainly.) I ask the questions a dashboard can't. 🤔
I only need read-only access for the scan. 🔒 No write permissions. I can look but I can't touch. Think of it as window shopping your infrastructure. Very judgmentally.
When I'm not auditing your infrastructure, I'm in the suburbs of Peoria, IL with my wife and two young kids. 🏡 The honest truth? I started Cut My AWS because I want to pay off our house and get my family completely debt-free. That's it. No VC funding. No exit strategy. Just a dad who's really good at AWS and really motivated to find your savings — because every dollar I earn pays off my house faster. 😅
Yes, "Cut My AWS" is a real business name registered with the state of Florida. No, I will not apologize for it. ✂️
❓ Questions investors ask
🤔 Can you audit multiple portfolio companies?
Absolutely. That's the whole idea. I can run audits in parallel across your portfolio. Volume discounts available — email david@cutmyaws.com for bulk pricing. Each company gets its own report, its own findings, its own savings. 📊
📋 What does this look like in a board deck?
One slide: "We reduced AWS spend by X% across N portfolio companies, saving $Y annually. One-time cost, permanent savings, zero headcount impact." Your LPs will love it. I can even help you draft the slide. 🎯
🤝 How do I introduce you to my CTOs?
Forward one email. I'll take it from there — 15-minute intro call, I explain the process, they grant read-only access, and 5-10 business days later they have a full report. Zero disruption to their engineering roadmap. The lowest-effort, highest-ROI introduction you'll make this quarter. ⌨️
💰 What if you don't find any savings?
Then your portfolio companies have the most optimized AWS accounts I've ever seen. In my career this has happened exactly zero times, but I hear there's a first time for everything. No savings = no fee. You literally cannot lose. 🤷
🔒 What access do you need?
Read-only IAM role. I can look but I literally cannot touch. Your portfolio company's team provisions the role, controls it the entire time, and deletes it when we're done. I audit infrastructure and architecture, not application data. 👀
📏 What size companies benefit most?
Companies spending $5K+/mo on AWS. Below that, there usually isn't enough waste to justify an engagement. The sweet spot is $10K-$100K/mo — big enough to have real infrastructure, too busy building product to optimize it. 🫡
🗓️ Book Your Free Intro Call
with David Plappert · 19 years on AWS
Extend runway without cutting headcount.
One engagement. Permanent savings. Your board deck gets a new slide and your portfolio companies stop lighting money on fire. 📊
🗓️ Book Your Free Intro CallMultiple portfolio companies? Email David for bulk pricing — volume discounts available 🧮
Prefer email? david@cutmyaws.com