Ask HN: Thinking about sharing a web server with friends. Any advice please?

Hi everyone. I'm thinking about clubbing together with some friends to rent a VM based Windows server to use as a web host. I like this idea over getting a much cheaper account on a shared web host, as we'd have admin access, our own public IP and could use remote-desktop. With a shared host, we would only get to use some web-based control panel. The downside is that we'd all have to share and be nice, but since we're friends that shouldn't really be a problem. (!) Has anyone joined a club like this to rent a server? Would you like to please share your experiences or share some advice? Many thanks, billpg.