DigitalOcean raises $100M in debt as it scales toward revenue of $300M

Post by formercoder » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

nmfisher wrote: post #183

smallgovt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Using the word “raise” when talking about financing via debt seems inappropriate and very start-upy. Why would it be inappropriate? It's common to describe both debt and equity rounds as a 'raise'. My guess is you're operating under the assumption that debt is inferior to equity because you're forced to pay it back. But, in reality, when you raise an equity round, you also have to pay back the principal + "interes…

> It's common to describe both debt and equity rounds as a 'raise'. I disagree, I always interpret "raise" as equity. > My guess is you're operating under the assumption that debt is inferior to equity because you're forced to pay it back. But, in reality, when you raise an equity round, you also have to pay back the principal + "interest"-- it just delays the repayment date til your liquidation event. Debt and equit…

Post by markwahl » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #154

raiyu wrote: post #92

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You hit the nail on the head, we are best for SMBs and teams that want to get things done quickly and don't need the hyperscale and added complexity of AWS. Our focus has always been on simplicity and as our customer needs and our own internal needs have grown we've added additional products to continue to allow customers to scale with us. We launched with just Droplets in 2012 and have since added block storage, Spa…

What I really wish for is a simple way of running docker containers (like AWS Fargate, or at least ECS), because I want to run docker containers across multiple droplets, but I don't want the full complexity of Kubernetes. Also something akin to auto-scaling groups. If DO had those, I'd use it a whole lot more than I do (currently I only spend use approx. $140/month on DO).

Post by mkj » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

Tecuane wrote: post #144

dcchambers wrote: post #87

I have some personal stuff hosted on DO. I really like their options, service, their branding, UX/UI, etc...but they are kind of in a weird spot. Halfway between being good for cheap personal projets, and being good for enterprise. If I want a simple VPS there are cheaper options. If I am an enterprise spending millions/year on cloud infra I am probably only looking at AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. How does DO get out of thi…

DO's branding and a lot of their offering is pretty good, but their locations for non-US customers are much worse than many of their competitors. For instance (and a particular point for me), they still don't have any presence in Australia after over half a decade of it being marked as "under review" on their customer feedback page. Having geographical locations to back up the quality of the offering is a step forwar…

Post by formercoder » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #192

dannyw wrote: post #181

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On a cashflow basis, you incur 100% of the depreciation at the moment you pay for it.

But wouldn’t your profit be awesome the years you didn’t have to claim depreciation?

Post by formercoder » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:39 AM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #83

texasbigdata wrote: post #72

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It's perhaps not nefarious. A lot of GAAP and the standards came about when manufacturing was a lot more prevalent. Concepts like depreciation make a lot more sense when you mentally place yourself in the 1920s.

Depreciation still makes plenty of sense today. A company with very little capital equipment will simply not have a lot of depreciation. Digital ocean as a cloud hoster has a lot of capital equipment (servers etc) to worry about as well.