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Additionally, Amazon is generously offering $5,000 in AWS credit for all participating teams. This seems really dangerous -- it creates a huge incentive for co

Additionally, Amazon is generously offering $5,000 in AWS credit for all participating teams. This seems really dangerous -- it creates a huge incentive for companies to waste YC's time. There aren't many things early startup founders can do which are worth more than $15000/hour. Sure, you can probably filter out many AWS-credit-seekers via the application process, but that adds more work for the people who read through all the applications. Have you considered either (a) refusing the credits, or (b) taking a small number and handing them out to the most "deserving" startups at the end of the day?

mwseibel 11y ago
We feel comfortable with this
fragsworth 11y ago
At the risk of sounding too cynical, have you considered that Amazon is likely paying YC as much or more for the opportunity to offer this credit? And that maybe this whole deal is at least partially because Amazon wants to acquire new customers?
- x0x0 11y ago
  Without taking any position on whether YC would be willing to sell their reputation like that (personally, I'd say almost certainly not), I can't imagine amazon would be willing to pay the price they'd charge.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- mwseibel 11y ago
  AWS isnt paying us
matheweis 11y ago
Startup Weekend regularly hands out $100 AWS credits to all attendees. I don't think I've ever seen anyone (or groups of people) go to SW just for that credit. $5000 is a bit more, but that -that- much more.
- personjerry 11y ago
  I'd argue that a 50x increase (literally 5000%) is significantly more.
- cperciva 11y ago
  I think there's a huge gap between getting $100 for a weekend and getting $5000 for 20 minutes.
  - matheweis 11y ago
    You [usually?] get the credits for showing up for about an hour or two on the very first night. No need to be there for the entire weekend if that's what you're there for. The relative value of 20 minutes with YC partners is significantly higher, so as to make the incentive of the $5000 irrelevant. Anyone who thinks otherwise is missing the real value proposition of the office hours program. As to OP's concern that it could create incentive for someone to waste the YC partner's time in the sole interest of gaining the $5000 of credits, I think that is not giving enough credit to the YC folks. I'm sure they'll be able to weed them out.
powera 11y ago
Pretty much every cloud platform offers a deal like this to pretty much every tech incubator so the actual value of the deal isn't that high, certainly not $5000.
nodesocket 11y ago
Most good founders realize $5,000 in hosting credits in terms of their time and effort is not a compelling reason to do office hours. Office hours provides way more insightful and long term value than some free server hours. Developers who think in terms of over-optimizing costs probably wouldn't even be picked anyway.
- cperciva 11y ago
  $5,000 in hosting credits in terms of their time and effort is not a compelling reason to do office hours. Really? Are you able to produce more than $5000 of value for your startup in 20 minutes? Office hours provides way more insightful and long term value than some free server hours. For the people YC wants to talk to, sure. But dangling $5000 of AWS credits in front of people may attract people they don't want to talk to.
  - abarrettjo 11y ago
    But it isn't just the 20 minutes, it's the transaction costs of transportation and interrupting your day. What if you choose to travel from a couple hours away, or even very far away?
    - cperciva 11y ago
      Well, I'm assuming that people who just want the $5000 would sign up to do this over skype.
  - morgante 11y ago
    > Really? Are you able to produce more than $5000 of value for your startup in 20 minutes? Hosting credits are not currency. Most startups will never need anything close to $5000 in AWS credits. Not to mention that AWS basically gives them out like candy. I have several grand in AWS credit just from attending hackathons and conferences.
    - nodesocket 11y ago
karambahh 11y ago
All major hosting companies have a sponsoring programme for startups in incubators/accelerators. Unfortunately I cannot disclose the numbers and the companies, but they are way larger than $5k $5k in credit for hosting probably has a marginal cost of $0. On the other end, if you take AWS offer and start using their services, you'll probably won't leave them anytime soon, particularly if you rely on provider-specific systems (SNS for instance). Startups get a nice discount, hosting providers get an opportunity to supply a future successful startup and very quickly win back the $5k...
- cperciva 11y ago
  I agree that offering this makes sense for AWS. What I'm not so sure about is whether offering this makes sense for YC. (BTW, Tarsnap isn't in any incubators/accelerators, but if someone wants to throw a bunch of AWS credits at me I'd be happy to have them!)
  - jedberg 11y ago
    You could probably apply for the Amazon accelerate program and get $15K from them pretty easily.
    - cperciva 11y ago
      The $15k of credits are only for "startups in select accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and other startup organizations".
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - sgk284 11y ago
        Hosting companies give away free credits like candy. Don't let the lack of incubator stop you from asking. I've gotten up to $10,000 in hosting credits just by emailing someone and asking for it. No contract or anything, they just added credit to my account.
mosquito242 11y ago
generally speaking as a startup, I'm not hyper-worried about spending 5K in hosting costs and unless you're an entirely social/pre-revenue startup, by the time you're spending 5K in hosting, your business is starting to make some decent revenue. I'm much more focused on getting and having enough users that I get to worry about spending 5k on hosting.
- cperciva 11y ago
  I think you're missing my point. Tarsnap has no trouble paying its AWS bills, which are well over $5k/month. I'm not worried about spending $5k. But at the same time I can't think of anything I could spend 20 minutes on which would create more than $5k of value. $1 of AWS credits = $1 less expenses = $1 more profits = $1 more revenue.
  - leereeves 11y ago
    It's more than 20 minutes including preparation and travel time.
  - mosquito242 11y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but my argument is that the 5K in credits are actually of fairly low value to the startups getting office hours, because they don't have real profits/revenue at that stage, at least not enough where 5K makes a difference to the long term survival of a startup. If I'm a very early stage startup, I'm worried about being alive next year. Yes, 5K may help, but that 5K will likely not make a significant difference in my company's prospects. 20 minutes with an advisor at YC could completely change my company's trajectory. I'd imagine there are very few companies that apply, and then get selected for office hours, that will walk away from the meeting saying "I'm so glad I did that because I got 5K in Amazon credits." That said, it is still a great perk.
  - sharemywin 11y ago
    If a founder works 10k-15k/hrs on a unicorn over 5 years its like 15k/hr for every hour they spend on it.

mwseibel 11y ago

We feel comfortable with this

fragsworth 11y ago

At the risk of sounding too cynical, have you considered that Amazon is likely paying YC as much or more for the opportunity to offer this credit? And that maybe this whole deal is at least partially because Amazon wants to acquire new customers?

x0x0 11y ago
Without taking any position on whether YC would be willing to sell their reputation like that (personally, I'd say almost certainly not), I can't imagine amazon would be willing to pay the price they'd charge.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mwseibel 11y ago
AWS isnt paying us

matheweis 11y ago

Startup Weekend regularly hands out $100 AWS credits to all attendees. I don't think I've ever seen anyone (or groups of people) go to SW just for that credit. $5000 is a bit more, but that -that- much more.

personjerry 11y ago
I'd argue that a 50x increase (literally 5000%) is significantly more.
cperciva 11y ago
I think there's a huge gap between getting $100 for a weekend and getting $5000 for 20 minutes.
- matheweis 11y ago
  You [usually?] get the credits for showing up for about an hour or two on the very first night. No need to be there for the entire weekend if that's what you're there for. The relative value of 20 minutes with YC partners is significantly higher, so as to make the incentive of the $5000 irrelevant. Anyone who thinks otherwise is missing the real value proposition of the office hours program. As to OP's concern that it could create incentive for someone to waste the YC partner's time in the sole interest of gaining the $5000 of credits, I think that is not giving enough credit to the YC folks. I'm sure they'll be able to weed them out.

powera 11y ago

Pretty much every cloud platform offers a deal like this to pretty much every tech incubator so the actual value of the deal isn't that high, certainly not $5000.

nodesocket 11y ago

Most good founders realize $5,000 in hosting credits in terms of their time and effort is not a compelling reason to do office hours. Office hours provides way more insightful and long term value than some free server hours. Developers who think in terms of over-optimizing costs probably wouldn't even be picked anyway.

cperciva 11y ago
$5,000 in hosting credits in terms of their time and effort is not a compelling reason to do office hours. Really? Are you able to produce more than $5000 of value for your startup in 20 minutes? Office hours provides way more insightful and long term value than some free server hours. For the people YC wants to talk to, sure. But dangling $5000 of AWS credits in front of people may attract people they don't want to talk to.
- abarrettjo 11y ago
  But it isn't just the 20 minutes, it's the transaction costs of transportation and interrupting your day. What if you choose to travel from a couple hours away, or even very far away?
  - cperciva 11y ago
    Well, I'm assuming that people who just want the $5000 would sign up to do this over skype.
- morgante 11y ago
  > Really? Are you able to produce more than $5000 of value for your startup in 20 minutes? Hosting credits are not currency. Most startups will never need anything close to $5000 in AWS credits. Not to mention that AWS basically gives them out like candy. I have several grand in AWS credit just from attending hackathons and conferences.
  - nodesocket 11y ago

karambahh 11y ago

All major hosting companies have a sponsoring programme for startups in incubators/accelerators. Unfortunately I cannot disclose the numbers and the companies, but they are way larger than $5k $5k in credit for hosting probably has a marginal cost of $0. On the other end, if you take AWS offer and start using their services, you'll probably won't leave them anytime soon, particularly if you rely on provider-specific systems (SNS for instance). Startups get a nice discount, hosting providers get an opportunity to supply a future successful startup and very quickly win back the $5k...

cperciva 11y ago
I agree that offering this makes sense for AWS. What I'm not so sure about is whether offering this makes sense for YC. (BTW, Tarsnap isn't in any incubators/accelerators, but if someone wants to throw a bunch of AWS credits at me I'd be happy to have them!)
- jedberg 11y ago
  You could probably apply for the Amazon accelerate program and get $15K from them pretty easily.
  - cperciva 11y ago
    The $15k of credits are only for "startups in select accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and other startup organizations".
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgk284 11y ago
      Hosting companies give away free credits like candy. Don't let the lack of incubator stop you from asking. I've gotten up to $10,000 in hosting credits just by emailing someone and asking for it. No contract or anything, they just added credit to my account.

mosquito242 11y ago

generally speaking as a startup, I'm not hyper-worried about spending 5K in hosting costs and unless you're an entirely social/pre-revenue startup, by the time you're spending 5K in hosting, your business is starting to make some decent revenue. I'm much more focused on getting and having enough users that I get to worry about spending 5k on hosting.

cperciva 11y ago
I think you're missing my point. Tarsnap has no trouble paying its AWS bills, which are well over $5k/month. I'm not worried about spending $5k. But at the same time I can't think of anything I could spend 20 minutes on which would create more than $5k of value. $1 of AWS credits = $1 less expenses = $1 more profits = $1 more revenue.
- leereeves 11y ago
  It's more than 20 minutes including preparation and travel time.
- mosquito242 11y ago
  I understand what you're saying, but my argument is that the 5K in credits are actually of fairly low value to the startups getting office hours, because they don't have real profits/revenue at that stage, at least not enough where 5K makes a difference to the long term survival of a startup. If I'm a very early stage startup, I'm worried about being alive next year. Yes, 5K may help, but that 5K will likely not make a significant difference in my company's prospects. 20 minutes with an advisor at YC could completely change my company's trajectory. I'd imagine there are very few companies that apply, and then get selected for office hours, that will walk away from the meeting saying "I'm so glad I did that because I got 5K in Amazon credits." That said, it is still a great perk.
- sharemywin 11y ago
  If a founder works 10k-15k/hrs on a unicorn over 5 years its like 15k/hr for every hour they spend on it.