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$250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#151

Post by tombrossman »

144 comments as I type this and I can't believe no one has mentioned OVH yet. I'm a happy customer of DigitalOcean, AWS, and OVH and my default choice for a while now has been OVH. DigitalOcean beats everyone in ease of use and UX, and AWS obviously has huge potential for scaling, but OVH consistently beats DigitalOcean in VPS performance and they include DDOS protection as standard.

Test for yourself, fire up similarly sized VPSs at both DigitalOcean and OVH and benchmark them running identical tests. The DigitalOcean VPSs are pretty fast but the OVH ones consistently perform better for both CPU and disk speed.

OVH supports startups just like the rest of the companies mentioned elsewhere in the thread too - see https://www.ovh.com/en/dlp/ for info. I have no affiliation with any of these companies except as a customer.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#152

Post by BinaryIdiot »

tombrossman wrote: post #151

144 comments as I type this and I can't believe no one has mentioned OVH yet. I'm a happy customer of DigitalOcean, AWS, and OVH and my default choice for a while now has been OVH. DigitalOcean beats everyone in ease of use and UX, and AWS obviously has huge potential for scaling, but OVH consistently beats DigitalOcean in VPS performance and they include DDOS protection as standard. Test for yourself, fire up simila…

Interesting; I had never heard of OVH before. I currently have a bunch of stuff hosted on AWS and have been looking at digital ocean pricing; I'll add this to the list of places to check out. Thanks!

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#153

Post by arrty88 »

I'm sure this has been said already, but this is a pretty big slap in the face to startups not in a fancy incubator program, which probably already have everything else going for them. It's like giving a big check to someone who already won a full ride to a top university, no?

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#155

Post by andrewstuart »

andrewsomething wrote: post #61
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…

There seems to be a bit of confusion about how we handle kernels at DO. Hopefully I can clear things up a bit. On newer distro versions (e.g. Ubuntu >= 15.04, Debian 8, Fedora, CoreOS, FreeBSD) we no longer use "external" kernels. You are free to compile and use custom kernels. We're happy with what we've seen, and with Ubuntu 16.04 around the corner our default distribution will have support for this as well. After…

>>You are free to compile and use custom kernels.

What's exactly does this mean? Could you please post the link to the documentation page that explains how?

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#156

Post by goeric »

I think it's great that DO is offering this, but it's a little shocking they don't offer this to fellow Techstars alum. We only get $10K in credits, which is a stark contrast. We are loyal to Digital Ocean because it's a great service but also because it's family. We could have just as easily went AWS. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that it's a slight oversight and they'll bring this offer to their roots.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#157

Post by andrewstuart »

geoka9 wrote: post #67
iolothebard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BizSpark requires a 5 minute write up. It's comically easy to get accepted as an individual if you can string together a few sentences. Azure is so inexpensive even without BizSpark it's kind of amazing to me. Having done startups in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, what people have available now is incredible IMO.

"Deploy a Linux VM on Azure. Azure supports a wide range of Linux distributions including Ubuntu, CentOS, Oracle Linux, Chef and Puppet." Doesn't sound very reassuring. Do they have a good track record with non-MS stacks?

I use Azure for Linux and like it alot. You should try it.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#158

Post by kriro »

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…

I'd look at it this way:

1) If you feel you're funding direct competitors...we're talking about startups. More of a validation of your base idea than a real edge for the competition. It's also not horrible to know your direct competition uses the same infrastructure.

2) Otherwise...this lets DO add more customers from the group of startups, which you're in, and thus gain more experience with their typical problems and needs which should benefit you (ever so slightly).

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#159

Post by onion2k »

kriro wrote: post #158
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…

I'd look at it this way: 1) If you feel you're funding direct competitors...we're talking about startups. More of a validation of your base idea than a real edge for the competition. It's also not horrible to know your direct competition uses the same infrastructure. 2) Otherwise...this lets DO add more customers from the group of startups, which you're in, and thus gain more experience with their typical problems an…

If you feel you're funding direct competitors...we're talking about startups. More of a validation of your base idea than a real edge for the competition.

There are startups and there are YC startups. If you've got in to YC you've probably already proven your idea and you're generating revenue - YC is about accelerating rather that actually starting after all. If you're directly competing with a YC company then this does put you at a disadvantage, especially if you're in a space where computational power is a big part of your burn.

Mind you, hasn't AWS given huge blocks of credits away to startups in lots of accelerators since forever? This isn't really a new problem for competitors.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#160

Post by tajen »

tombrossman wrote: post #151

144 comments as I type this and I can't believe no one has mentioned OVH yet. I'm a happy customer of DigitalOcean, AWS, and OVH and my default choice for a while now has been OVH. DigitalOcean beats everyone in ease of use and UX, and AWS obviously has huge potential for scaling, but OVH consistently beats DigitalOcean in VPS performance and they include DDOS protection as standard. Test for yourself, fire up simila…

OVH is a French group, submitted to the new Jan 2015 law about spying. Read this for more information: https://www.ovh.co.uk/news/a1766.ovh-stand-french-surveillan...
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