The median AWS based SaaS company spends around 6% of their revenue on AWS. (this compares to a median of 7% for those who choose to manage their own servers).

As such, $500k/mo isn't a terribly elite club. Essentially every SaaS company that does more than $10MM/mo of revenue is spending as much or more than we are.

You don't think any traditional economy companies pay $500k a month for anything? How much do you think airlines spend on fuel a month for example?

Do people really think AWS got to be a 10 billion dollar business by hosting node.js to garage door opener gateways?

When situations like this come up I always suggest people read the history of Western Electric. Talk about scale!