If you're cold starting in the public cloud, Lambda can start in 1s. If you're cold starting Lambda functions with a VPC NIC (which you would need to do if you're trying to connect to a MySQL server), it can take 10-15+ seconds. The issue is provisioning the network interface, not any manner of packing the code.
Thank you for clarifying. I up voted you. I have not experience that since I run most of my Lambdas in the public cloud so I have not experienced that. That is good to know and sounds like something they really need to address.
