Mogulus Doesn't Own a Single Server and has $1.2 million in funding, 15,000 People Creating Channels
Scoble the Ubiquitous has a fascinating post on how Mogulus, a live video channel startup, uses S3/EC2 and doesn't own a single server. The trends that have been happening for a while now are going mainstream. To do great things you no longer need to start by creating a huge war chest. You can forage off the land, like any good mobile, light weight fighting unit.
For a strategy hit he mentions the same needed change in perspective as Beau Lebens talked about when making FeedBlendr:
One tip he gave us is that when using Amazon’s services you have to design your systems with the assumption that they will never be up and running. What he means by that is services are “volatile” and can go up and down without notice. So, he’s designed his systems to survive that. He told me that it meant his engineering teams had to be quite disciplined in designing their architecture.