How do you mitigate the inherent risk of a one-person team?

How do I mitigate the risk to a start-up from non-paying customers?

• If a start-up is looking to launch a cloud-based service, delivered on an Amazon / Azure platform - what's the best way to protect against excess bandwidth usage and non-payment from customers?   For example, If a customer signs up to the service, registers credit card details, pays up-front for a certain amount of bandwidth, but then uses excess and cancels their card (or payment gets declined)?   Basically I'm wondering how small, cash-strapped startup organisations, with 'middleware' products and services, mitigate the risk of exposure from non-paying customers? What techniques are available (when taking a customer's credit card / debit card details) to prevent this from happening?

• Answer:

  Some thoughts: Design you system so customers cannot "exceed limits". Let people buy credits up front and then use them, or set hard upper limits on usage. Building a system that lets customers cost you money is just asking for trouble ;-) Encourage payment plans that help your cash flow. For example, if you're charging per-month then offer an annual plan with 10% off to existing customers. Actively track customers who are going to be hitting limits and let them know. If folk are buying credits let them know when they're going to run out soon. If they're buying annually remind them when their next invoice is due so they're not surprised. If a credit card is going to expire, remind them they need to enter a new one. And so on.