by CoreSet on 8/3/20, 2:10 PM with 62 comments
by nate on 8/3/20, 3:33 PM
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.
by cactus2093 on 8/3/20, 4:02 PM
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?
by Abishek_Muthian on 8/3/20, 4:09 PM
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.
by avthar on 8/3/20, 4:07 PM
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.
by dna_polymerase on 8/3/20, 8:01 PM
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.
by dekhn on 8/3/20, 4:07 PM
by gdulli on 8/3/20, 3:22 PM
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.
by jkristobans on 8/3/20, 3:47 PM
by beamatronic on 8/3/20, 3:38 PM