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Free idea: "Our startup wants to change the world by reselling the free $500K in Azure services [1] to outsiders for half-off, then liquidating itself. This ma

by gojomo 12y ago

Free idea: "Our startup wants to change the world by reselling the free $500K in Azure services [1] to outsiders for half-off, then liquidating itself. This may not be a 'traditional YC play', or 'scalable', or even 'honest', but we'll give YC half the loot (approximately $100K) and don't even require the traditional investment/convertible note. Just tell Microsoft we're a YC company! Oh, and let us know whether you like the name 'Azurbatrage' or 'Arbitrazure' better. Stretch goal: resell all the unused Azure capacity of our classmate companies – 50X the profit opportunity." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9023582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9023582

jameshk 12y ago
Ha.
AlwaysBCoding 12y ago
Better idea, make a script that can spin up Azure instances and mine Bitcoins on them. Then build a web app on top of it that will liquidate Azure credits to cash as a service. When someone dumps their credentials into your site you spin up $500,000 of computing power on Azure to mine Bitcoins from and then liquidate the Bitcoins you mine into cash and take like 15% off the top. I'm not sure what the conversion rate of Azure computing dollar to mined Bitcoin would be, but this would work to some extent with $500,000 wouldn't it? What YC company wouldn't want a Azure -> cash liquidation web app.
- taskstrike 12y ago
  Definitely a worse idea. The bitcoin you can mine with general instances is insanely low compared to market value because of customized bitcoin mining machines. I tried this from experience with AWS credit I got from a incubator.
- gojomo 12y ago
  "At Arbitrazure, we are of course open to any idea for converting free Azure credit to cold hard cash. But our research indicates that without special mining chips, Bitcoin mining is not competitive, and $500K of Azure per month (15,000 'A1' VMs) would take 8-16 years ($48-$96 million) to earn one Bitcoin ($225). That's why we remain committed to resale, rather than direct exploitation."

by gojomo 12y ago

jameshk 12y ago

Ha.

AlwaysBCoding 12y ago

Better idea, make a script that can spin up Azure instances and mine Bitcoins on them. Then build a web app on top of it that will liquidate Azure credits to cash as a service. When someone dumps their credentials into your site you spin up $500,000 of computing power on Azure to mine Bitcoins from and then liquidate the Bitcoins you mine into cash and take like 15% off the top. I'm not sure what the conversion rate of Azure computing dollar to mined Bitcoin would be, but this would work to some extent with $500,000 wouldn't it? What YC company wouldn't want a Azure -> cash liquidation web app.

taskstrike 12y ago
Definitely a worse idea. The bitcoin you can mine with general instances is insanely low compared to market value because of customized bitcoin mining machines. I tried this from experience with AWS credit I got from a incubator.
gojomo 12y ago
"At Arbitrazure, we are of course open to any idea for converting free Azure credit to cold hard cash. But our research indicates that without special mining chips, Bitcoin mining is not competitive, and $500K of Azure per month (15,000 'A1' VMs) would take 8-16 years ($48-$96 million) to earn one Bitcoin ($225). That's why we remain committed to resale, rather than direct exploitation."