Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

Sure they were "rejected" by NYC (for valid reasons - apparently treated very well) but then went into the Boulder program after applying. And no doubt the reference given by Tisch must have certainly helped I'm guessing.

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#5

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#6

Post by neotek » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #3

"rejection" -- I had to reread that headline 3 times before I figured out what it was trying to say.

"Reject" is fine, it means "a person or thing dismissed as inadequate or unacceptable."

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#7

Post by Nux » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

Every day, working with customers' products or witnessing stories such as DO's I realise that success is 90% marketing and 10% actual technical stuff.

You don't have to have the greatest features or too many of them or even all of them working as advertised. You don't need to take security very seriously (hello DO, WhatsApp!) or use buzz-stuff such as OpenStack (hello Rackspace, HPCloud!) or any existing "cloud standards" in order to succeed.

You just need to market it and promote it right.

I'm not even sarcastic or anything. As a techie I always frickin overlook it and this is the single most important element that can help you make serious money/business.

There's a whole bunch of people out there who don't know shit or don't really care about how great your product is technically (or not ;> ). All you need is it satisfies some basic "need" and a shiny packaging, it's enough to go out there and get some milk flowing in.

Kudos to the DO folk!

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#8

Post by frakkingcylons » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 10:56 PM UTC

I know that TechCrunch isn't interested in discussing any actually useful details of what made DO successful...but for me it came down to them doubling the RAM per instance and using SSDs in 01/2013, creating a collection of excellent sysadmin articles, and cheap/free backups and images.

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#9

Post by solve » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 11:03 PM UTC

Nux wrote: post #7

Every day, working with customers' products or witnessing stories such as DO's I realise that success is 90% marketing and 10% actual technical stuff. You don't have to have the greatest features or too many of them or even all of them working as advertised. You don't need to take security very seriously (hello DO, WhatsApp!) or use buzz-stuff such as OpenStack (hello Rackspace, HPCloud!) or any existing "cloud stand…

Alternatively: all the ways that it could fail don't matter if there's at least one way it could succeed.

Re: Digital Ocean’s journey from TechStars reject to cloud-hosting darling

#10

Post by giulianob » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 11:45 PM UTC

Nux wrote: post #7

Every day, working with customers' products or witnessing stories such as DO's I realise that success is 90% marketing and 10% actual technical stuff. You don't have to have the greatest features or too many of them or even all of them working as advertised. You don't need to take security very seriously (hello DO, WhatsApp!) or use buzz-stuff such as OpenStack (hello Rackspace, HPCloud!) or any existing "cloud stand…

I think at the end it came down to price. No one else was offering SSDs at the time for that cheap. Sure you get what you pay for but for a lot of people I guess it's good enough.