9 ms·

An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

102 points by CoreSet 6y ago

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
This type of infrastructure credits can really accelerate a bootstrapped startup, unfortunately almost every major provider of such freebies have now moved on to 'Contact your nearest Accelerator/VC' type model. Google was the first to move that way, now Microsoft has cancelled its Bootstrap program and even Facebook has done away with its Startup Accelerator program in favour of 'Contact your nearest Accelerator/VC we approve of' model. I was personally benefitted by Facebook's aforementioned Accelerator program. I applied for my previous startup's privacy focused chat-app-network dating platform for their bootstrap phase, but they directly approved it for their Accelerator phase through which I received $80,000 worth benefits incl. $15,000 AWS credits on which I ran my product; these kind of help makes life or death difference for a disabled soloprenuer from a village in India running bootstrapped startup(Facebook doesn't know this). Now anyone in my position is at the mercy of some Accelerator or VC.
- odomojuli 6y ago
  Dude. WHAT are you doing. I understand that your situation mandates a bit of pragmatism in order to survive. If that is the case, why are you painting a target on your back? Do you seriously think nobody at Facebook reads this? You just admitted, with your REAL NAME, that you basically lied to Facebook about information that actively poses a liability to them and took their money. I am seriously baffled as to why you think this comment was a good idea. I am not trying to antagonize you, but highlighting the fact that you are vulnerable while publicizing information that exacerbates the situation does not align here.
  - Traster 6y ago
    I think you might be overreacting to this, he said Facebook didn't know his situation, that doesn't mean he lied about it. It's not really necessarily relevant where he's from or what disabilities he has.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    I told Facebook doesn't know "I'm disabled" that's all, To imply I got selected meritoriously. Obviously everything about my Startup was part of my application details, since my application was hosted on Facebook platform(messenger app) it knew the statistics as well and I believe that's the reason it got selected. Then again, its Facebook we are talking about here, it might even know what I had for breakfast the day I applied. But I believe you made that comment out of concern of my well-being, I appreciate that and I apologise if my sentence formation caused unnecessary confusion. P.S. I use my real name here to own accountability of the things I write here and to ensure I don't compromise my integrity in the lure of anonymity/pseudo-anonymity(No offence to anyone who don't use their real name, I understand).
    - odomojuli 6y ago
      Understood. Definitely an overreaction on my part. Just a little weary from how exclusive these applications can be and what the consequences can look like. No need to apologize. Wish you well.
gdulli 6y ago
> Stripe monitored the developer community enough to see our initial posts If I can't trust that I'll get the benefits promised by a service unless my complaint about not getting the benefits reaches a certain threshold of virality in the community, I have to assume I'm not getting them. I'm glad that they did. Maybe I'll get lucky as they did with "an email" and maybe I won't, but I certainly can't rely on it.
- exhaze 6y ago
  I can't think of any other company that bends over backwards to please engineers who use their platform (and, by extension, the people who visit this site) more than Stripe. Back in 2013, when my co-founder and I started a company and later got into YC, my co-founder went thru every circle of hell in order to fix all the mistakes we made when we incorporated. If Stripe Atlas had existed back then and we'd used it, this would just be a non-issue. Unless you're an expert in the technicalities of startup incorporation/bylaws/etc, the value Stripe Atlas provides is huge and it just doesn't make sense to me why someone would pass on it.
- harrisonjackson 6y ago
  The issue here is really with AWS. These credit promises are all over every startup perk program - paid or free. Ultimately it is up to AWS's activate team to approve or deny the credits. In our experience, we were denied extra credits by the AWS activate team and the perk program we had joined specifically for the credits gave us a full refund. I don't think anyone is saying to "rely" on free money - but if you have a shot at it then at least send the email.
nate 6y ago
An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly lead to them signing a 5 figure deal with us which was everything to a tiny startup not making anything :) Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up.
- paulcole 6y ago
  > Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up. Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for white guys and the uphill battle faced by others.
  - hayksaakian 6y ago
    I think his point was that NOT showing up fails equally well for everyone
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    It's sad that this comment is down voted to oblivion but it's very true. Just showing up doesn't work for everyone, and I've personally seen it not work at all for black and Latino founders.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      The trouble with the post wasn't the information, but the way it was presented. The HN guidelines state "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Just a reminder" isn't a good way to start such a conversation. It implies that there is already a consensus on the issue when there isn't.
      - nrmitchi 6y ago
beamatronic 6y ago
Wonder how much bitcoin an unscrupulous person could mine with that $5k of credits.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Less than $5k
  - theelous3 6y ago
    But 5k in credits is worthless to someone who doesn't need them, so even if it's 1c, that's something. (Or really, so long as it's more than you can sell the account for.)
    - dbsndust 6y ago
      Interesting point. What's the going rate on AWS accounts that come with credits? Is there a marketplace for this?
      - nrmitchi 6y ago
        IIRC credits are non-transferable for exactly this reason, and also why billing information is required (even if you have credit). "Selling" a full account with credits (or access to that account to use the credits) would be super risky since it's still tied back to you, you will definitely be selling for less than the credit amount, and you would be on the hook if AWS invalidated those credits after-the-fact.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Maybe in the order of $50 rough estimate, that is 2 orders of magnitude less. Bitcoin is designed to cost the price of electricity when mining on dedicated ASIC miners. AWS costs are covering enterprise hardware with extra services, electricity is not one tenth of that, and AWS is using general purpose CPU (maybe GPU instances) which are not one tenth as efficient as ASIC.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
jkristobans 6y ago
Good old email and persistence.
cactus2093 6y ago
In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS. Good on Stripe and Atlas for making this more available to more bootstrapped companies like the one in this post, but there's certainly a huge difference between $1k or $5k and $100k. On the one hand I understand why cloud providers have to limit this, they're trying to buy lock-in and have to choose startups that they think have a larger chance of growing big enough for this to be profitable. Even a successful bootstrapped company will normally not grow as large as a successful VC-backed company, and will probably be smarter with their money as well and not rack up enormous AWS bills so quickly. But on the other hand, this is an almost invisible example of the kind of gatekeeping that helps those who are starting from a position of privilege (i.e. have the connections to raise a large seed round) and gives them a leg up over everyone else. If as a tech community we're striving to make starting a company more meritocratic and make sure there is a low barrier to entry for everyone, I wonder if there's a better way to distribute these kinds of perks?
- vincentmarle 6y ago
  > In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS. This seems very backward, because you also don’t really need those credits anymore at that point.
  - chickenpotpie 6y ago
    $100k is another employee for free. That's a significant sum for an early stage startup.
    - icheishvili 6y ago
      Why should startups backed by powerful institutional capital get more credits from AWS than ones that are bootstrapped and hurting for cash much more?
dekhn 6y ago
when I worked for a startup, an email got us $250K in credits. That was enough to run the compute for the company for at least a year. Now, we had a nice deal with our VCs, and AWS really liked us, but it really was a "asking made the difference".
avthar 6y ago
> Send that one last email. Even if it seems like a bit much, or things are settled, just be sure you ask and give the other person a chance to help you in ways you can't predict Good lesson for budding founders or indie devs. Shows you the power of "Just ask". If you don't ask, the answer is always no.
dna_polymerase 6y ago
Nice to hear Stripe actually caring for their customers. Besides that, I think your product serves a wonderful niche. Had the exact problem of hosting a static site for a customer and actually needed to host a full Python backend eventually to receive form submissions. In the future I'll just use formcake.

102 points by CoreSet 6y ago

This type of infrastructure credits can really accelerate a bootstrapped startup, unfortunately almost every major provider of such freebies have now moved on to 'Contact your nearest Accelerator/VC' type model. Google was the first to move that way, now Microsoft has cancelled its Bootstrap program and even Facebook has done away with its Startup Accelerator program in favour of 'Contact your nearest Accelerator/VC we approve of' model. I was personally benefitted by Facebook's aforementioned Accelerator program. I applied for my previous startup's privacy focused chat-app-network dating platform for their bootstrap phase, but they directly approved it for their Accelerator phase through which I received $80,000 worth benefits incl. $15,000 AWS credits on which I ran my product; these kind of help makes life or death difference for a disabled soloprenuer from a village in India running bootstrapped startup(Facebook doesn't know this). Now anyone in my position is at the mercy of some Accelerator or VC.

odomojuli 6y ago
Dude. WHAT are you doing. I understand that your situation mandates a bit of pragmatism in order to survive. If that is the case, why are you painting a target on your back? Do you seriously think nobody at Facebook reads this? You just admitted, with your REAL NAME, that you basically lied to Facebook about information that actively poses a liability to them and took their money. I am seriously baffled as to why you think this comment was a good idea. I am not trying to antagonize you, but highlighting the fact that you are vulnerable while publicizing information that exacerbates the situation does not align here.
- Traster 6y ago
  I think you might be overreacting to this, he said Facebook didn't know his situation, that doesn't mean he lied about it. It's not really necessarily relevant where he's from or what disabilities he has.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  I told Facebook doesn't know "I'm disabled" that's all, To imply I got selected meritoriously. Obviously everything about my Startup was part of my application details, since my application was hosted on Facebook platform(messenger app) it knew the statistics as well and I believe that's the reason it got selected. Then again, its Facebook we are talking about here, it might even know what I had for breakfast the day I applied. But I believe you made that comment out of concern of my well-being, I appreciate that and I apologise if my sentence formation caused unnecessary confusion. P.S. I use my real name here to own accountability of the things I write here and to ensure I don't compromise my integrity in the lure of anonymity/pseudo-anonymity(No offence to anyone who don't use their real name, I understand).
  - odomojuli 6y ago
    Understood. Definitely an overreaction on my part. Just a little weary from how exclusive these applications can be and what the consequences can look like. No need to apologize. Wish you well.

gdulli 6y ago

> Stripe monitored the developer community enough to see our initial posts If I can't trust that I'll get the benefits promised by a service unless my complaint about not getting the benefits reaches a certain threshold of virality in the community, I have to assume I'm not getting them. I'm glad that they did. Maybe I'll get lucky as they did with "an email" and maybe I won't, but I certainly can't rely on it.

exhaze 6y ago
I can't think of any other company that bends over backwards to please engineers who use their platform (and, by extension, the people who visit this site) more than Stripe. Back in 2013, when my co-founder and I started a company and later got into YC, my co-founder went thru every circle of hell in order to fix all the mistakes we made when we incorporated. If Stripe Atlas had existed back then and we'd used it, this would just be a non-issue. Unless you're an expert in the technicalities of startup incorporation/bylaws/etc, the value Stripe Atlas provides is huge and it just doesn't make sense to me why someone would pass on it.
harrisonjackson 6y ago
The issue here is really with AWS. These credit promises are all over every startup perk program - paid or free. Ultimately it is up to AWS's activate team to approve or deny the credits. In our experience, we were denied extra credits by the AWS activate team and the perk program we had joined specifically for the credits gave us a full refund. I don't think anyone is saying to "rely" on free money - but if you have a shot at it then at least send the email.

nate 6y ago

An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly lead to them signing a 5 figure deal with us which was everything to a tiny startup not making anything :) Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up.

paulcole 6y ago
> Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up. Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for white guys and the uphill battle faced by others.
- hayksaakian 6y ago
  I think his point was that NOT showing up fails equally well for everyone
- gamblor956 6y ago
  It's sad that this comment is down voted to oblivion but it's very true. Just showing up doesn't work for everyone, and I've personally seen it not work at all for black and Latino founders.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    The trouble with the post wasn't the information, but the way it was presented. The HN guidelines state "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Just a reminder" isn't a good way to start such a conversation. It implies that there is already a consensus on the issue when there isn't.
    - nrmitchi 6y ago

beamatronic 6y ago

Wonder how much bitcoin an unscrupulous person could mine with that $5k of credits.

goatinaboat 6y ago
Less than $5k
- theelous3 6y ago
  But 5k in credits is worthless to someone who doesn't need them, so even if it's 1c, that's something. (Or really, so long as it's more than you can sell the account for.)
  - dbsndust 6y ago
    Interesting point. What's the going rate on AWS accounts that come with credits? Is there a marketplace for this?
    - nrmitchi 6y ago
      IIRC credits are non-transferable for exactly this reason, and also why billing information is required (even if you have credit). "Selling" a full account with credits (or access to that account to use the credits) would be super risky since it's still tied back to you, you will definitely be selling for less than the credit amount, and you would be on the hook if AWS invalidated those credits after-the-fact.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Maybe in the order of $50 rough estimate, that is 2 orders of magnitude less. Bitcoin is designed to cost the price of electricity when mining on dedicated ASIC miners. AWS costs are covering enterprise hardware with extra services, electricity is not one tenth of that, and AWS is using general purpose CPU (maybe GPU instances) which are not one tenth as efficient as ASIC.
nrmitchi 6y ago

jkristobans 6y ago

Good old email and persistence.

cactus2093 6y ago

In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS. Good on Stripe and Atlas for making this more available to more bootstrapped companies like the one in this post, but there's certainly a huge difference between $1k or $5k and $100k. On the one hand I understand why cloud providers have to limit this, they're trying to buy lock-in and have to choose startups that they think have a larger chance of growing big enough for this to be profitable. Even a successful bootstrapped company will normally not grow as large as a successful VC-backed company, and will probably be smarter with their money as well and not rack up enormous AWS bills so quickly. But on the other hand, this is an almost invisible example of the kind of gatekeeping that helps those who are starting from a position of privilege (i.e. have the connections to raise a large seed round) and gives them a leg up over everyone else. If as a tech community we're striving to make starting a company more meritocratic and make sure there is a low barrier to entry for everyone, I wonder if there's a better way to distribute these kinds of perks?

vincentmarle 6y ago
> In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS. This seems very backward, because you also don’t really need those credits anymore at that point.
- chickenpotpie 6y ago
  $100k is another employee for free. That's a significant sum for an early stage startup.
  - icheishvili 6y ago
    Why should startups backed by powerful institutional capital get more credits from AWS than ones that are bootstrapped and hurting for cash much more?

dekhn 6y ago

when I worked for a startup, an email got us $250K in credits. That was enough to run the compute for the company for at least a year. Now, we had a nice deal with our VCs, and AWS really liked us, but it really was a "asking made the difference".

avthar 6y ago

> Send that one last email. Even if it seems like a bit much, or things are settled, just be sure you ask and give the other person a chance to help you in ways you can't predict Good lesson for budding founders or indie devs. Shows you the power of "Just ask". If you don't ask, the answer is always no.

dna_polymerase 6y ago

Nice to hear Stripe actually caring for their customers. Besides that, I think your product serves a wonderful niche. Had the exact problem of hosting a static site for a customer and actually needed to host a full Python backend eventually to receive form submissions. In the future I'll just use formcake.