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THIS. I'm not clear what business the OP thinks that YC is in that they'd be interested in companies that don't have a story about how they could get huge. Th

THIS. I'm not clear what business the OP thinks that YC is in that they'd be interested in companies that don't have a story about how they could get huge. This doesn't have to be bullshit if your idea is a beachhead for something bigger. Not all startup ideas can have a story-- but I think most can if the founders are ambitious/imaginative enough. Example: If you had a hot social site for a single college in 2004, do you think you could spin a credible story on how it could be big? And, once it was big, how it might make money? Or if you sold books on the web in 1994, could you craft a story about how that get huge?

akh 14y ago
Here's our vision, do you think it will be huge? Cloud computing is fundamentally changing the way that companies buy computing, and our vision is to be the one-stop-shop for computing in the future. The cloud's pay-as-you-go billing model is very different to what most people are used to, and we're developing tools to choose providers and deployment options. And we're just getting started... So like you said, it's something that's not big now, but could be huge in say 5 or 10 years from now.
- wtvanhest 14y ago
  Being devil's advocate here: Even 5 or 10 years from now, there won't be that many more people shopping for cloud services than there are now. Right now people are talking about a startup bubble, how many more startups will be there 10 years from now? I doubt many more. There is a finite number of people that will start companies each year. Starting companies isn't for everyone. Fortune 500 companies will probably switch more and more to the cloud, but they don't need a service since they have someone hired to analyze options. Further, cloud companies will probably be resistant to a service like yours because it will negatively impact their margins. They will do things like bundle with services, etc in an attempt to drive their own margins. Do I think eventually there will be a hipmunk of cloud service providers? Maybe, but you should be able to do better analysis than: making up a number, multipling it by 10. Start with the number of startups launched every day, then determine how much you will make from each startup with each transaction. You can pretty much assume you won't get the enterprise users anytime soon. You can also assume small businesses won't become expert enough to shop for cloud services and they would rather shop for a total service provider i.e. developer who knows the cloud. (that developer might service 20 small businesses, but only give you 1 transaction when they first research cloud providers).
  - akh 14y ago
    > Further, cloud companies will probably be resistant to a service like yours because it will negatively impact their margins. I should mention that we've been approached by a number of cloud providers who want to be included in our system. We currently support AWS, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace.
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      You should ask "Why?" It sounds from your previous comments that you are a traffic acquisition play for these providers. You do the leg work and bring them customers, and for that they give you a cut of the action. Its not a bad place to be, but it isn't necessarily a 'viable' place to be. For each customer you bring to them, how much do you make initially? Does the customer come back to you or do they start dealing directly with the vendor? Who answers support calls? What happens during an outage, do you get paged or the underlying cloud vendor? If you don't make a whole lot per customer you have to make it up in volume, and you have to be sure that you are not spending more to get to that customer than the customer pays you. If the customer can cut you out of the loop, you have to know when they are likely to do that and why (volume requirements? custom configurations? etc) and generate a way to predict their exit. That will give you insight into their 'lifetime value.' Finally you need to figure out what is the barrier, if any, to someone else being in your space and going after the same customers (is your offering unique? protectable? etc). Once you know those things then you know what sort of revenue you can expect for 1 customers, 10 customers, and 10,000 customes, and what it might cost you to acquire 1, 10 or 10,000 and by subtracting the second number from the first number, you can figure out how much money you have to pay staff and for facilities, and if you subtract off that cost and the number you have left is positive, then that number, as a percentage of the number you started with, can tell you if this business of yours makes any sense at all. Greater than 15% you can live off it, greater than 50% and you'll be able to expand into adjacent markets, greater than 80% and you'll grow like Google or Microsoft in its early days.
    - Domenic_S 14y ago
      This one's a flyer, I think, because the answers to these questions aren't very compelling: -How novel is this? (sort of novel) -What is proprietary about it? (inherently nothing) -How high is the barrier to entry for competitors? (low) -Who are your possible competitors? (the cloud services themselves AND other companies like you) So the end game looks like this: either the big cloud providers make their own tools like yours and make you irrelevant, or one of them acquires you. That doesn't seem too investable to me. I do think it's a perfect 3-5 person startup that you have a good chance of cashing out of, so don't take my post as criticism. As far as I can tell you need an advisor to help you with the "how do I make money" question more than you need an investment.

akh 14y ago

Here's our vision, do you think it will be huge? Cloud computing is fundamentally changing the way that companies buy computing, and our vision is to be the one-stop-shop for computing in the future. The cloud's pay-as-you-go billing model is very different to what most people are used to, and we're developing tools to choose providers and deployment options. And we're just getting started... So like you said, it's something that's not big now, but could be huge in say 5 or 10 years from now.

wtvanhest 14y ago
Being devil's advocate here: Even 5 or 10 years from now, there won't be that many more people shopping for cloud services than there are now. Right now people are talking about a startup bubble, how many more startups will be there 10 years from now? I doubt many more. There is a finite number of people that will start companies each year. Starting companies isn't for everyone. Fortune 500 companies will probably switch more and more to the cloud, but they don't need a service since they have someone hired to analyze options. Further, cloud companies will probably be resistant to a service like yours because it will negatively impact their margins. They will do things like bundle with services, etc in an attempt to drive their own margins. Do I think eventually there will be a hipmunk of cloud service providers? Maybe, but you should be able to do better analysis than: making up a number, multipling it by 10. Start with the number of startups launched every day, then determine how much you will make from each startup with each transaction. You can pretty much assume you won't get the enterprise users anytime soon. You can also assume small businesses won't become expert enough to shop for cloud services and they would rather shop for a total service provider i.e. developer who knows the cloud. (that developer might service 20 small businesses, but only give you 1 transaction when they first research cloud providers).
- akh 14y ago
  > Further, cloud companies will probably be resistant to a service like yours because it will negatively impact their margins. I should mention that we've been approached by a number of cloud providers who want to be included in our system. We currently support AWS, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    You should ask "Why?" It sounds from your previous comments that you are a traffic acquisition play for these providers. You do the leg work and bring them customers, and for that they give you a cut of the action. Its not a bad place to be, but it isn't necessarily a 'viable' place to be. For each customer you bring to them, how much do you make initially? Does the customer come back to you or do they start dealing directly with the vendor? Who answers support calls? What happens during an outage, do you get paged or the underlying cloud vendor? If you don't make a whole lot per customer you have to make it up in volume, and you have to be sure that you are not spending more to get to that customer than the customer pays you. If the customer can cut you out of the loop, you have to know when they are likely to do that and why (volume requirements? custom configurations? etc) and generate a way to predict their exit. That will give you insight into their 'lifetime value.' Finally you need to figure out what is the barrier, if any, to someone else being in your space and going after the same customers (is your offering unique? protectable? etc). Once you know those things then you know what sort of revenue you can expect for 1 customers, 10 customers, and 10,000 customes, and what it might cost you to acquire 1, 10 or 10,000 and by subtracting the second number from the first number, you can figure out how much money you have to pay staff and for facilities, and if you subtract off that cost and the number you have left is positive, then that number, as a percentage of the number you started with, can tell you if this business of yours makes any sense at all. Greater than 15% you can live off it, greater than 50% and you'll be able to expand into adjacent markets, greater than 80% and you'll grow like Google or Microsoft in its early days.
  - Domenic_S 14y ago
    This one's a flyer, I think, because the answers to these questions aren't very compelling: -How novel is this? (sort of novel) -What is proprietary about it? (inherently nothing) -How high is the barrier to entry for competitors? (low) -Who are your possible competitors? (the cloud services themselves AND other companies like you) So the end game looks like this: either the big cloud providers make their own tools like yours and make you irrelevant, or one of them acquires you. That doesn't seem too investable to me. I do think it's a perfect 3-5 person startup that you have a good chance of cashing out of, so don't take my post as criticism. As far as I can tell you need an advisor to help you with the "how do I make money" question more than you need an investment.