The Golden Toilet Rule: Don’t Ignore Your Cloud Infrastructure

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Your product can look great and still be sitting on terrible plumbing.

Dan Griffith sits down with Tom Sas, a cloud infrastructure architect with more than 20 years of experience, to explain what he calls the Golden Toilet Rule and why founders should stop treating cloud infrastructure as something that simply “runs in the background.”

Tom breaks down a common trap: software developers build the product, keep the infrastructure working, and everything seems fine.

Until the company starts scaling.

Then costs rise, security gaps appear, systems become harder to manage, and nobody is quite sure who actually owns the problem.

Dan and Tom discuss:

• Why “it works” can be a dangerous standard
• Why developers shouldn’t automatically own cloud infrastructure
• How poor cloud visibility leads to unnecessary spend
• Why every company needs clear infrastructure ownership
• How regular audits expose unused resources, rising costs, and security risks
• The difference between guardrails and roadblocks
• When it makes sense to bring in a DevOps or cloud specialist
• Why backup, disaster recovery, permissions, and cost controls need ongoing attention

Tom also shares a simple five-step framework founders can use to assess their cloud environment:

Assign ownership. Create visibility. Audit regularly. Build guardrails. Know when to call a specialist.

Because great software running on weak infrastructure is still a weak business foundation.

Seriously, don’t do that.™

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