Methods and systems may be associated with a cloud computing environment. A serverless function orchestrator may execute a socket activation for a VM to pre-provision a TCP socket (e.g., setting up virtual interfaces and creating socket structures) before the VM hosts any serverless function associated with the pre-provisioned TCP socket. After this socket activation, the orchestrator may receive a request for a first serverless function and, responsive to the received request, start the first serverless function on the VM using the pre-provisioned TCP socket. After the activation and prior to starting the first serverless function, the system may queue packets received in connection with the pre-provisioned TCP socket. In some embodiments, multiple TCP sockets, each associated with a VM, may activated before any serverless functions are hosted and the first serverless function is started on a VM selected based on information in a serverless function experience data store.