DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

Post by proksoup » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #10

icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I wonder if the this pushes there valuation over 1B, if so I think that means that Techstars is the first accelerator outside of YC to produce a unicorn. Personally I hope so, Digital Ocean is a great product and I think one of the really smart things they did was be generous with there free credits as it was at least a great way for me to get on there platform and later on drop a fair amount into hosting with them.

Is unicorn just a billion dollar non-public startup? Isn't there some other magic sauce required like supernormal margins or superfew employees or exploiting toothless regulations? DO seems to be almost a too straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's id…

Post by contingencies » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #10

icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I wonder if the this pushes there valuation over 1B, if so I think that means that Techstars is the first accelerator outside of YC to produce a unicorn. Personally I hope so, Digital Ocean is a great product and I think one of the really smart things they did was be generous with there free credits as it was at least a great way for me to get on there platform and later on drop a fair amount into hosting with them.

Is unicorn just a billion dollar non-public startup? Isn't there some other magic sauce required like supernormal margins or superfew employees or exploiting toothless regulations? DO seems to be almost a too straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's id…

Post by CoachRufus87 » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:49 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #12

vruiz wrote: post #8

> The $83 million is going directly into growing our team and expanding our product offerings with networking and storage features. Great to hear. Real private networking, object/shared storage and most importantly HA (IP failover/load balancing) is all DO is missing to start really competing with AWS for "big business".

I don't think HA is really on the needed list, seeing as you can roll your own load balancer in 5 minutes using provided tutorials. I mean I guess they could make an image for it to make it a little easier.. The AWS elastic load balancer is really nothing fancy. Real private networking and object shared storage are both huge for sure though.

Post by vruiz » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #20

vruiz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they implemented IP failover already? I haven't heard anything. Having your own LB without being able to fail over the IP is not HA. If the LB does down so does your business.

What? You use DNS failover and multiple load balancers. FOO.COM A record -> 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, 1.2.3.6 Then at 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, and 1.2.3.6 you put a load balancer that splits loads between all of your clients. Any LB goes down, and DNS client retries will deal with it. If any backend server goes down, your LB will deal with it. Using this pretty successfully at digital ocean right now. What is the downside? I guess…

Post by vruiz » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

CoachRufus87 wrote: post #25

brianwawok wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think HA is really on the needed list, seeing as you can roll your own load balancer in 5 minutes using provided tutorials. I mean I guess they could make an image for it to make it a little easier.. The AWS elastic load balancer is really nothing fancy. Real private networking and object shared storage are both huge for sure though.

How is their current private networking offering not 'real'?