diff --git a/Libraries/src/Amazon.Lambda.AspNetCoreServer/APIGatewayProxyFunction.cs b/Libraries/src/Amazon.Lambda.AspNetCoreServer/APIGatewayProxyFunction.cs
index 6bfbb0ae4..80483b02d 100644
--- a/Libraries/src/Amazon.Lambda.AspNetCoreServer/APIGatewayProxyFunction.cs
+++ b/Libraries/src/Amazon.Lambda.AspNetCoreServer/APIGatewayProxyFunction.cs
@@ -37,8 +37,8 @@ public abstract class APIGatewayProxyFunction
         /// </summary>
         public const string APIGATEWAY_REQUEST = "APIGatewayRequest";
 
-        private readonly IWebHost _host;
-        private readonly APIGatewayServer _server;
+        private IWebHost _host;
+        private APIGatewayServer _server;
 
         // Defines a mapping from registered content types to the response encoding format
         // which dictates what transformations should be applied before returning response content
@@ -80,7 +80,26 @@ public abstract class APIGatewayProxyFunction
         /// <summary>
         /// Default constructor that AWS Lambda will invoke.
         /// </summary>
-        protected APIGatewayProxyFunction()
+        protected APIGatewayProxyFunction(bool autoStart = true)
+        {
+            if (autoStart)
+            {
+                Start();
+            }
+        }
+
+        private bool IsStarted
+        {
+            get
+            {
+                return _server != null;
+            }
+        }
+
+        /// <summary>
+        /// Should be called in the derived constructor 
+        /// </summary>
+        protected void Start()
         {
             var builder = CreateWebHostBuilder();
             Init(builder);
@@ -90,7 +109,7 @@ protected APIGatewayProxyFunction()
             _host.Start();
 
             _server = _host.Services.GetService(typeof(Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.Server.IServer)) as APIGatewayServer;
-            if(_server == null)
+            if (_server == null)
             {
                 throw new Exception("Failed to find the implementation APIGatewayServer for the IServer registration. This can happen if UseApiGateway was not called.");
             }
@@ -173,6 +192,11 @@ public virtual async Task<APIGatewayProxyResponse> FunctionHandlerAsync(APIGatew
         {
             lambdaContext.Logger.LogLine($"Incoming {request.HttpMethod} requests to {request.Path}");
 
+            if (!IsStarted)
+            {
+                Start();
+            }
+
             InvokeFeatures features = new InvokeFeatures();
             MarshallRequest(features, request, lambdaContext);
             lambdaContext.Logger.LogLine($"ASP.NET Core Request PathBase: {((IHttpRequestFeature)features).PathBase}, Path: {((IHttpRequestFeature)features).Path}");