Try the idea on a free machine, ship it on a $29 one

You have an idea on Saturday morning. The version of yourself who builds it depends on whether the next step is annoying. Heroku makes you give them a credit card. Vercel asks you to pick a tier. AWS makes you stare at the IAM console.

On Hoody, the free tier is a real container: on a virtual machine, not dedicated metal, sized for hobbies and side projects. You build the prototype on it, get a real URL, share it with three friends to see if it sticks. Nobody asked for a card. Nothing expires.

Two weeks later, four people are using it. You move to a $29 dedicated bare metal box, same image, same URL pattern. The friction between Saturday and shipping was zero. The friction between shipping and scaling was twenty-nine dollars.