Tyk: Micro-grants for side projects | Hacker News Reader

Tyk: Micro-grants for side projects

tyk.io

138 pointssakofchit27 comments

I remember as a child our school were offering £20 to student teams wanting to run a business for a week, with the team that turns over the greatest profit being the winners. Unfortunately as we were limited in skills and ability, the best project was a car wash.

I wish they run these types of projects in Colleges and Universities, where students are more skilled and motivated to work further out of the box. I would have loved to have been given £20 to buy a little server, a domain, etc, to build some small product over the course of a month with some friends. Hell, turn it into a coursework for programming, project management, etc.

This kind of thing seems like a low-cost, high-value exercise for students to begin to understand the difficulties of business (most will fail - but that's okay).

From the site... I like this more than the hucksters out there

How do I receive the funding?

We’re not giving away cash money. If you are successful, we will make a payment directly to a product or service provider that you have specified – or an alternative that we suggest – that you need for your side project to grow.

Hey!

So basically they don't actually give you the $500 directly (which is probably for the better), but they'll be paying for any services that you need to get your project off the ground + provide guidance. You'd have to apply via their website, and they'll reach out to you--do a quick interview and if they like what they see they'll back your side project.

The question is from the website, not my own

This is a great idea, but I wish was slightly larger. Most people with interesting side projects aren’t stuck by a lack of $500.

I suppose it is enough to take the risk away from paying for hosting if you are quite uncertain

It's a start. Lots of teenagers would love to take that sort of deal.

Yeah, but then it's not something "your work won't pay for".

If hosting costs are a concern: both Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure give away $300 and $200 in credits, respectively, for new accounts.

So, the selected project should spend that money on other kind of services like databases, CDN, analytics or other any similar that usually don't have a starter/free tier

$500 is a nontrivial prototyping budget for stuff like PCB development, 3D printing, prototyping small/simple machined parts, etc.

Most people with interesting side projects aren’t stuck by a lack of $500.

I think this says a lot about your peer group and your lack of awareness about people outside of it.

Love the focus on side projects!

If you want help getting your side project off the ground and it fits the mold of an API-first SaaS product, then https://saasify.sh may interest you.

Excerpt:

How do I receive the funding?

"We’re not giving away cash money. If you are successful, we will make a payment directly to a product or service provider that you have specified – or an alternative that we suggest – that you need for your side project to grow."

Now that is brilliant!

Yes, usually side projects get stuck on one or more aspects -- like not being to find the right dedicated server provider, or what have you...

By not giving the money directly, they eliminate a whole class of applicants that might apply for, but not really need the money...

So again, brilliant!

I just applied to it for https://prismos.dev this is something I have been building for 3 years on the side and while I feel its amazing what this allows one to do, which is build IoT apps with a super easy API and install apps on your esp8266 IoT devices from an App store, no flashing and seamless end user experience, its still seems difficult to monetize to me till far so no point raising funding (atleast till i figure out a go to market strategy), but I would still want people to start using it. While the amount isn't a lot, if it can allow me to fund my AWS infra for a year without worrying about cash while I spend money in promoting it from my pocket, then its great for me.

This is very cool. I wonder how many great ideas need something like this, between $0 outside money and VC millions to take off.

Side note: Tyk is an awesome company. I've used their API gateway for a few years. Awesome open source core/enterprise paid model.

> I wonder how many great ideas need something like this, between $0 outside money and VC millions

Many, but realistically (by experience) £500 is waaay too low to make an impact.

IMHO the problem is in the 4 to 5 digits. 3 digits can be scraped together almost trivially - a credit card, a few months of savings - but they won't make a significant difference. People who need £500 to bootstrap are already finding them.

Now, people who need 5,000 - those are underserved in the UK imho. The bank will likely give you a bad deal (if it does at all), it's too little for real investors, and it's too little to risk giving away half the business anyway; but it could still make a substantial difference, because it would allow you to pay for actual manpower at local rates, without having to roll the dice with fiverr or offshores.

This said, it's a step forward, no doubt.

500€/month is, e.g, what I put extra to my private social security in Germany. If I don't have to choose anymore between "pay hosting for a side project" and "keep a bigger contribution to my retirement" is one less point of friction and one less discussion with my wife about the family budget and one more project where the only thing I might be wasting is my time.

It removes almost all of the downside and keeps all the upside for developers. This kind of funding lowers the activation barrier considerably.

I read it as £500 total, not per month. That’s the equivalent of eating out one time each month, hardly life-changing.

Thanks for the debate on this. I work at Tyk and lead the team running this initiative so find it really useful.

This is the first 'cohort' for the fund, and we are open to increasing the grant size in future. However, keeping it smaller means we're able to make a difference to more projects.

Tyk also started as a side project ourselves, with founders initially working around their day jobs, before bootstrapping for a few years. Because of our own experience we believe there are viable, exciting projects out there that could benefit from this type of small scale help. Applications received seem to suggest this too.

Once we've finished this round there will hopefully be a blog sharing some of the projects helped if you're interested to see. In the meantime, thanks again for the feedback which we'll take on board for next time.

Emma at Tyk

A directory of these sorts of grants along with their deadlines and application process would be very useful!

Great idea! I'll put one together in a couple days on Github :)

There is a directory of sorts here: https://github.com/nayafia/microgrants

(Not with deadlines though, as far as I am aware.)

Yeah I came across that, it doesn't really seem actively updated + some of the microgrants that are listed there are inactive now

I "watch" it on Github and it still gets updated. If notice out-of-date things you should open an issue or a pull-request.

Thought this would be interesting to share--applications are due March 31st!

How does intellectual property work in this case? Is there a probability that my idea will be "stolen" if I share it with this website?

I'm afraid I can't speak to intellectual property law, but someone else may be able to. I work for Tyk though, and lead the team for this particular initiative. Thanks for your interest in it.

I can confirm that we do not - and will not ever - ask for any Intellectual Property rights, equity, or 'ROI', in return for the microgrant. The only thing we ask for is the opportunity to share the stories behind the projects we fund. And if winning applicants said no to that too, we'd be fine with that :)

Why are we doing this? We started as a side project ourselves. This new initiative is our way of paying it forward to help others working in their spare time to create open, innovative projects.

Appreciate the point your question raises, so I'll make sure our FAQs are updated to make our position on this clearer. Thank you! Tyk

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