DevOps
Terraform vs Pulumi vs CDK in 2026: What We Actually Use and Why
Three tools that claim to solve the same problem. Here is what the differences actually mean in practice, and when each one makes sense.
A fragile codebase rarely kills a round outright. It does something quieter: it hands the investor negotiating leverage they did not have before.
Most seed-stage founders treat technical due diligence as a formality. The investor likes the market, likes the team, the round will close. Then someone reviews the codebase and the tone of the conversation shifts.
Technical due diligence at seed is not a code review. Nobody is checking naming conventions or function purity. They are looking for signals about judgment, execution discipline, and risk. The questions an investor's technical advisor is actually asking: Does this team know what to build versus what to buy? Do they have the discipline to maintain what they ship? Is this codebase something a new engineer could work in six months from now, or does it depend entirely on the two people who wrote it?
The answers to those questions come from small things. How deployments are handled. Whether there is any test coverage at all. How authentication was implemented. Not because any single one is disqualifying, but because the pattern of choices tells a story about the team.
Technical concerns at seed rarely kill rounds outright. More often they surface as: a lower valuation than the founder expected. Conditions around bringing in a technical advisor before funds release. Milestones tied to specific infrastructure improvements before the next tranche.
None of those outcomes are catastrophic on their own. But they are all negotiating leverage the investor now holds that they did not hold before the review. The founder who walked in with a strong position walks out with a weaker one, not because the business changed, but because the codebase handed the other side something to push back on.
Founders who fix these things before due diligence are not doing more work overall. They are doing the same work at a point in time when it costs less and creates no leverage for anyone. After a term sheet with conditions, improving your infrastructure is something you owe the investor. Before the term sheet, it is just good engineering.
The window where this is purely in the founder's interest is before the process starts. Once the reviewer has written a memo, the findings are on record. Fixing things after the fact does not remove what was found.
Three tools that claim to solve the same problem. Here is what the differences actually mean in practice, and when each one makes sense.
The CI/CD market has effectively consolidated. Here is what actually differentiates the three main options and which context suits each one.
The salary line is visible. The total cost is not. Here is the full picture before you open the role.
We do infrastructure work for founders before fundraising rounds specifically because the before-and-after matters. The founders who come to us after a difficult due diligence experience are frustrated by a version of this problem they did not know existed until it was too late to fix it quietly.
The ones who come before are in a different position. The reviewer finds nothing to push back on. The conversation stays where founders want it: on the market and the team, not the code.
Written by
Mohammad Assi
Co-Founder, CMO & COO
Combines DevOps technical expertise with growth marketing and operations to help companies scale. Leads marketing strategy, client partnerships, and day-to-day delivery. Previously co-founded Elevability and built and sold SaaS applications across the region.
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