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Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

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Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#171

Post by jiggy2011 »

nostrademons wrote: post #170
jiggy2011 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to validate an idea, not having to worry about hosting costs for the first year or so could be a big deal. Especially if you're planning to sell out later to a larger company who has so much infrastructure already that hosting is practically free.

Hosting costs for validating an idea run about $10-20/month, not $10-20K/month. Get a shared webhost or VPS and run things on a single box. Even if you are using every programming productivity trick in the book (dynamic languages, 3rd party libraries, RDBMSes, etc.), there is no reason whatsoever why serving 20-100 users should cost $100K. Google had indexed the whole web and was serving most of the Stanford campus b…

Do you think you could run a service equivalent to say Google Maps on $20/month hardware under the sort of load that might come from being on the front page of HN and reddit on the same day (Heck, even HN alone)?

Also consider if you are serving HD video or doing financial number crunching over a large data set in the background.

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#172

Post by nostrademons »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #171
nostrademons wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting costs for validating an idea run about $10-20/month, not $10-20K/month. Get a shared webhost or VPS and run things on a single box. Even if you are using every programming productivity trick in the book (dynamic languages, 3rd party libraries, RDBMSes, etc.), there is no reason whatsoever why serving 20-100 users should cost $100K. Google had indexed the whole web and was serving most of the Stanford campus b…

Do you think you could run a service equivalent to say Google Maps on $20/month hardware under the sort of load that might come from being on the front page of HN and reddit on the same day (Heck, even HN alone)? Also consider if you are serving HD video or doing financial number crunching over a large data set in the background.

Yes.

Remember that we're talking MVP here, not production service. If your service makes it to the front page of HN and then crashes under load, you go to YCombinator or some other accelerator, say "We built a service, it was so popular that it got to the top of Hacker News and then crashed under load. Here's the demo link, and we have a list of X thousand users who signed up to learn more before it crashed." You will be accepted, and then you will have access to the $100K in Google Cloud's program.

The one exception is if they feel that you lack the technical talent to build a scalable system even with hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. In that case, they will tell you "Go find an ex-Googler or ex-FBer to be your technical cofounder and come back to us." In that case, $100K won't make much of a difference, you lack some critical skills to employ that $100K well. If that is your situation, well, I happen to be an ex-Googler with experience scaling Google Search who is in the market for a new project. I have my own ideas but would be happy to abandon them for something with demonstrated traction, so I would be happy to entertain e-mails (my address is in my profile) with a demo link and a spreadsheet with X thousand user signups.

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#173

Post by techdragon »

mindcrime wrote: post #147
patio11 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel obligated to point out that Microsoft Bizspark will give you free software/services for 3 years and it is "one guy working from his kitchen table"-friendly. If you're building things, they will give you stuff. Bonus: You can help support underdog upstarts like Microsoft against uncaring tech titans like Google.

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a Microsoft fan... I'm an old-school "open source" guy who thinks of M$ as the "Evil Empire" and that Gates/Borg picture is still kinda how I picture gates. And I think BizSpark is a great program. IF you are interested in running on the MS platform, or want to integrate with MS "stuff" you can't beat it. Enrollment is simple and painless, it lasts for 3 years, etc. It's one of…

You mention it in passing, but it's very important. "Integration" is hard when you never have a copy, BizSpark is at the least, a free windows testing vm, why make it harder to test on windows.

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#174

Post by bgoldy »

eropple wrote: post #130
walterbell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a startup has baked in dependencies on AWS services, yes. But if some startups have planned for portability and would rather stretch their OpEx runway instead of paying Amazon, switching could make sense.

I'm in the early stages of planning a startup that we'll likely bootstrap. I would use Google's cloud if this was a thing, and probably not switch later because our proposed design doesn't leverage much in the way of AWS stuff (about the only thing is SQS, but that's hidden behind an AMQP facade).

We have an email address on the landing page for folks like you -- cloudplatformstartups@google.com -- ping us, send us details, we'll get you over and take care of you. It's really more for recommending the intermediaries but it's a way to contact us -- so take the initiative :) The sentiment here is largely correct -- accelerators, VC's and others provide a great way to prevent fraud and other issues that programs like these deal with. We also offer $500 credit vouchers for folks who want to tinker and we are working on other ways (stay tuned) for people who want to evaluate for free to do so.

Hope this helps --

-Brian head of marketing, google cloud platform

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#175

Post by jiggy2011 »

nostrademons wrote: post #172
jiggy2011 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think you could run a service equivalent to say Google Maps on $20/month hardware under the sort of load that might come from being on the front page of HN and reddit on the same day (Heck, even HN alone)? Also consider if you are serving HD video or doing financial number crunching over a large data set in the background.

Yes. Remember that we're talking MVP here, not production service. If your service makes it to the front page of HN and then crashes under load, you go to YCombinator or some other accelerator, say "We built a service, it was so popular that it got to the top of Hacker News and then crashed under load. Here's the demo link, and we have a list of X thousand users who signed up to learn more before it crashed." You wil…

If you need to run your service for longer than the few hours it takes to burn through all of the CPU/disk/bandwidth you can afford to be useful, or want to skip the incubator step it could certainly be useful to be able to apply directly.

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#176

Post by tonymillion »

idlewords wrote: post #109
tim333 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, which is technically EU, you can pretty much just start, depending what it is exactly.

I think of the UK as much closer in business culture to the US in this respect.

In the UK its actually easier to start a business than it is in the US, and the associated costs are significantly less. *(as someone who has started companies in both the UK and US)

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#177

Post by mindcrime »

techdragon wrote: post #173
mindcrime wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a Microsoft fan... I'm an old-school "open source" guy who thinks of M$ as the "Evil Empire" and that Gates/Borg picture is still kinda how I picture gates. And I think BizSpark is a great program. IF you are interested in running on the MS platform, or want to integrate with MS "stuff" you can't beat it. Enrollment is simple and painless, it lasts for 3 years, etc. It's one of…

You mention it in passing, but it's very important. "Integration" is hard when you never have a copy, BizSpark is at the least, a free windows testing vm, why make it harder to test on windows.

Yes, that was our main reason for joining BizSpark, to be honest. We're a "pure play open source" company and absolutely favor running on OSS / Free Software platforms, and we encourage people to fun our products on Linux, a BSD UNIX, etc. But, in real-life, Windows, Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc. are out there, close to ubiquitous, and sometimes you have to work with that stuff. So BizSpark is a great way to get your hands on all of the MS "stuff" for testing, integration, etc.

Re: Google Launches Cloud Platform for Startups

#178

Post by jedc »

brudgers wrote: post #159
jedc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Points 2-4 would involve Google violating (likely) their own Ts&Cs with customers and (possibly?) state/federal law. But I think your Point 1 is highly likely. How many startups are going to build on Google's Cloud Platform, then after a year port everything to AWS, particularly if Google can prove that they're cheaper or at least cost-competitive with similar feature set. (Assuming that's true, of course, and that y…

Which of the terms and services do you think it would violate? From the general terms and services: The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. [1] "To develop new [services]" covers a Google pretty well if it chooses to do any of the activities I mentioned. In addition, the cloud services have this extension: Google ma…

You're looking at the wrong terms. These are the ones you want: https://developers.google.com/cloud/terms/
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