$250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups • Hacker News Board

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#141

Post by vecter » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

nhangen wrote: post #120

vecter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If I want to discuss pricing, a sales guy is exactly who I want to talk to.

As a founder, I've got sales guys cold calling and emailing me all day long. They are usually new, and completely disconnected from the realities that a startup founder faces. They also generally lack the authority to make decisions, so the call always ends up as a waste of time.

Who do you want to talk to then? Unless you're a big customer, the founder or VP of the company selling to you is probably (understandably) too busy to talk to you. If they really want your business, the sales person will escalate it appropriately. If they don't want it bad enough ... they won't get it.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#142

Post by dllthomas » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

assocguilt wrote: post #85

bmh_ca wrote: post #80

As a non-YC startup, I feel it quite unfair to be subsidizing other startups with our fees to DO. Which is a shame because I really appreciate and enjoy what the DO engineers have done. Nonetheless, I feel slighted, and while I had been otherwise happy with the service I am now all of a sudden incentivized to explore places more ecumenical. The feeling for me will probably pass, but I wonder how many other people hav…

Odd use of the word ecumenical.

Unusual but not incorrect. My understanding has it that the religious sense is a (very common) specialization of a more general meaning along the lines of "treating different groups the same".

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#143

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #129

whalesalad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been paying them for hosting prior to this announcement. You apparently find the cost to be reasonable enough for the value they deliver. What's changed? Customer satisfaction withstanding, they can do whatever they want with their profits.

What's changed is that in the perception of the commenter he's not on a level playingfield to begin with and this announcement tilted it even further away from level. So in order to do what's in his power to re-adjust he takes away some of those profits.

Anyone not living and working in SV is not on a level playing field when it comes to startups. Either the service you use does it's job at a price that fits your cost structure or it doesn't.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#144

Post by volaski » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

hoodoof wrote: post #139

andrewsomething wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're always looking for ways to help startups get up and running on our platform. If you're not a YC company, reach out to our customer success team. They can help you get started. If you're already a DO user, they can help you scale up. https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/

So just make the offer to all startups. If your company employs less than three people then $X amount of service provided per month.

In some way these guys are "investing" in these YC companies' future, hoping that when they grow they will stick with DO. YC has good track record so it's relatively a good bet, whereas if they did it with any rando startup, they'll probably lose tons of money (statistically 99% of the startups die). Remember this is a company not a charity.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#145

Post by geofft » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

shoyer wrote: post #88

assocguilt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd use of the word ecumenical.

I'm pretty sure the OP intended to write "economical" instead.

No, I think "ecumenical" in the less common sense of the word, "worldwide or general in extent, influence, or application," makes perfect sense here. Or even in the usual sense of the word, if you're making an analogy between startup accelerators and Christian denominations. It's a pretty good analogy, since despite small differences in belief and large differences in culture and practice, everyone has roughly the same goals. A Lutheran might feel particularly slighted at a program that gives free choral music to Anglicans, because they sing all the same anthems and none of the differences are relevant, and so restricting the free stuff to Anglicans rubs in the difference for no good reason. This is quite different from the way a Buddhist or an atheist would feel slighted by not getting that free music.

Given that OP claimed the feeling will pass, I don't think "economical" quite makes sense.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#146

Post by dayon » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

cddotdotslash wrote: post #132

tshtf wrote: post #2

Enjoy your free service, but I would avoid paying for Digital Ocean for any serious project. No custom kernel support 1. Digital Ocean does not allow you to run your own kernel natively. 2. Digital Ocean droplet kernels are infrequently updated. 3. These kernels often contain relevant security vulnerabilities. 4. This has been a known issue since 2013. 5. You can kexec a kernel, but this is an annoying workaround. ht…

Let's add to this the fact that if you're under a DOS attack with DigitalOcean they disconnect your machine from the internet (making it impossible for you to log in and do log analysis, etc.), send you an email saying "figure out what's happening and stop it", and then reconnect your machine several hours later only to repeat the process practically as soon as it's back online (assuming the DOS continues). I wouldn'…

I was about to post this. My project received a DDOS, and I could not access my droplet for over 12 hours.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#147

Post by schrodinger » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:47 AM UTC

nhangen wrote: post #120

vecter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If I want to discuss pricing, a sales guy is exactly who I want to talk to.

As a founder, I've got sales guys cold calling and emailing me all day long. They are usually new, and completely disconnected from the realities that a startup founder faces. They also generally lack the authority to make decisions, so the call always ends up as a waste of time.

Don't wanna work for the company you're founding with that attitude

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#148

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:48 AM UTC

harryh wrote: post #100

bmh_ca wrote: post #80

As a non-YC startup, I feel it quite unfair to be subsidizing other startups with our fees to DO. Which is a shame because I really appreciate and enjoy what the DO engineers have done. Nonetheless, I feel slighted, and while I had been otherwise happy with the service I am now all of a sudden incentivized to explore places more ecumenical. The feeling for me will probably pass, but I wonder how many other people hav…

They aren't giving credits to YC companies out of charity. They're doing it because they (probably correctly) think that the gains from this marketing spend will be outweighed by future profits. So you aren't subsidizing anyone.

Technically, all advertising and promotion is subsidized by the paying customers of the company. So increased promotional expenses still result in increased prices for customers, or reduced margin for the company (excepting an influx of customers that allows significant cost reduction due to scale).

But that's not always a bad thing.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#149

Post by ditonal » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:50 AM UTC

Digital Ocean is really great for hobbyists and side project. I especially admire their community tutorials, which hosts tons of great content and I'm sure has been very valuable marketing for their products. With that said, I think trying to build a real startup on DO would be a big mistake. They simply don't offer the suite of products that the bigger cloud offerings do, and as clouds become more sophisticated, companies using them will have huge competitive advantages. From my perspective, tools like PaaS, Lambda, managed databases, big data/analytic tools etc are getting increasingly sophisticated. Using them now is a bit like a late 90s company using Python to code circles around companies sticking familiar, stable C++, where in this analogy C+ +is the equivalent to DO's basic VPS offerings that you use to cobble together what you need (stable and familiar, but ultimately less powerful and requires much more developer time to use effectively).

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#150

Post by shawnps » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 6:00 AM UTC

andrewsomething wrote: post #94

bmh_ca wrote: post #80

As a non-YC startup, I feel it quite unfair to be subsidizing other startups with our fees to DO. Which is a shame because I really appreciate and enjoy what the DO engineers have done. Nonetheless, I feel slighted, and while I had been otherwise happy with the service I am now all of a sudden incentivized to explore places more ecumenical. The feeling for me will probably pass, but I wonder how many other people hav…

We're always looking for ways to help startups get up and running on our platform. If you're not a YC company, reach out to our customer success team. They can help you get started. If you're already a DO user, they can help you scale up. https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/

Not a startup, but I was going to shut Go Report Card (http://goreportcard.com/) down because I didn't want to pay for it myself anymore, and I reached out to Digital Ocean and was given some credits to keep it running. Thanks.