We are showing strong traction (100k monthly users) but we're struggling to find investors for our pre-seed round. We're first time founders without a big network and the current market downturn makes it even harder for B2C startups to raise money.
Did you ever have to shut down your early-stage startup despite strong traction?
In the meantime, kill off your cloud. Purchase or rent bare metal servers and stop paying per minute for shit. You can get 100+ of cpu cores, terabytes of ram, and disk space for less than a few hundred USD a month. Self-host the things you need (garage for s3, longhorn for persistent storage, harbor for Docker images, Loft for k8s management, etc).