$500k of Azure credit for YC startups • Hacker News Board

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#61

Post by hinicholas » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

I'm not sure how Azure intends to compete in this space. I've used Amazon, Rackspace, Google Cloud, Azure, and a bunch more.

Professionally, for simplicity I'd choose Rackspace or Google. For Scalability and price I'd choose Amazon. For personal projects I love Digital Ocean.

I dislike Azure's control panel and VM setup, and find their VMs slow. I'd only really consider them if I planned to implement a project that required leveraging the entirety of the Microsoft technology stack.

I can't see technology companies embracing Virtual Windows Server RTs and MSSQL Servers. Startups enjoy technologies that are easy to manage and scale with smaller teams. Enterprise level companies still need inhouse dedicated hardware for security.

Azure is kind of an oddball in the virtual hosting space.

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#62

Post by dlu » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

I'm surprised Dropbox or someone similar hasn't tried this already

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#63

Post by grandalf » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

This is pretty cool but I'd still prefer to use Google Apps and Gmail. The MS office web apps are pretty poor in comparison and unless you're a dedicated windows shop or have a lot of ex-finance people there is little benefit to the office suite.

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#64

Post by alwaysdoit » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 9:58 PM UTC

pdknsk wrote: post #44

Makes the 1-year $100K credit by Google look not so good now. https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/

It's still pretty good if you're not in YC, of course.

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#65

Post by photorized » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

jread wrote: post #55

photorized wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should give them another try. Azure has become much more stable. There was a major global outage a month or so ago, but then again that's something that had happened with other cloud providers. Overall, I find them easier to use than AWS, for example.

It was a multi-region, multi-hour outage on Nov 18. To my knowledge AWS has not experienced a multi-region outage. That said, they are learning from these events and improving stability.

You are right - the big outage happened in November. Feels like yesterday (it was a stressful day for me). AWS outages have been more limited in scope/geo, still took some sophisticated users of AWS offline (Netflix, Instagram come to mind).

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#66

Post by eob » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

This would be against the spirit of the offer, but I wonder if there is any easy way to arbitrage that credit into cold hard cash with low effort.

E.g., boot up a bitcoin mining cluster (though this particular idea would obviously yield low return since it would be running on off the shelf hardware)

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#67

Post by photorized » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

This is huge for Microsoft, because this is how Azure is finally starting to get accepted by the startup/VC community. They never had difficulty selling Azure to the enterprise, but for startups - AWS had always been the default choice.

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#68

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

staunch wrote: post #20

maxbrown wrote: post #9

Any idea on the LCV for Azure of the average YC startup? I know the average YC startup is going to be a cut above, but are a large percentage of them going to break the $500k in an early stage?

If the next Dropbox builds on Azure, instead of AWS, it would all be worth it. From Microsoft's perspective it's a pretty cheap bet that will probably not pay off. The oldest tactic in the Proprietary Platform Handbook is giving away free stuff to hook people early on. In this case Azure can run Linux VMs, so I wouldn't worry much about using them for that. Linux lacks lock in.

[deleted]

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#69

Post by jameshk » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:11 PM UTC

h43k3r wrote: post #6

I read somewhere that Satya Nadella is an active reader of Hacker News.

There's a quote from him about HN on YC's site.

Re: $500k of Azure credit for YC startups

#70

Post by rl3 » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 10:11 PM UTC

I wonder if Azure competitors will increase their free offerings to YC companies as a result of this.

The PaaS front is of particular interest. For example, it's not immediately evident that Heroku even offers anything similar, beyond a small free tier available to anyone.