Stripe Atlas includes $5k in AWS credits – we recevied $1k | Hacker News Reader

Stripe Atlas includes $5k in AWS credits – we recevied $1k

formcake.com

51 pointsCoreSet28 comments

(I work at Stripe.)

Here's the story on partner credits: A thing we do at Stripe Atlas is go to companies in the ecosystem whose services we like and ask them to bid on the opportunity to support a large cohort of Internet businesses. They then do so and communicate this to us on, essentially, a handshake: we act as a channel for them and in return they give our customers (and not us) some benefit.

Partners occasionally change their mind about internal thresholds for marketing promotions, which sometimes moves their operational processes about the deal that Stripe Atlas users will get going forward. They do not always communicate this to us in real time.

As we've learned more about this over the years, we've tried to update our language to convey that these sort of credits are up to the partners. (We have seen customers get $5k or other amounts and, ultimately, that is at Amazon's discretion.) I'll check later today to make sure we're using the newer "up to" language throughout our docs.

We hope this strikes the right balance of predictability for new Stripe Atlas users and getting the best support from the ecosystem for your new endeavors.

You'd need to start with the main Atlas homepage :

> Receive discounts from our partners, including $5,000 in free credits from Amazon Web Services

https://stripe.com/atlas

Thanks; that is a regression. We'll fix it.

It now reads:

“ Grow and scale with free credits

Every dollar matters when you start your company. Sign up for discounts from our partners, including Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, legal and accounting firms, and more.”

Stripe is not. In fact, it's not being used anywhere that references the credit amount (https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astripe.com+"%245%2C00...):

• https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/details

• https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/next

• https://stripe.com/atlas

I've archived the pages for the record:

• /details: http://archive.vn/xRojd and https://web.archive.org/web/20200707231048/https://stripe.co...

• /next: http://archive.vn/5eyFp and https://web.archive.org/web/20200605003821/https://stripe.co...

• /atlas: http://archive.vn/5m2s2 and https://web.archive.org/web/20200707231646/https://stripe.co...

Anyone who received less than the advertised credits prior to the archive date may be owed the difference.

> There's always an understanding with services like this that credit offers come with a lot of hand-waving and "caveat emptor"-ing: notice founders "have access to" free credits (emphasis ours), which could imply that some founders have the capacity to call on those funds, but not all. But still, the language does seem very direct and makes it easy to believe signing up includes $5,000 in AWS credits.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between why they got $1k vs $5k. Is there some clause in the contract that states that it's "up to $5k under certain situations?" It seems like a lot of information is missing here.

This is unfortunately the case in many of these offers where the big banner number is used to entice people in, but the actual amount given is much lower. There is really no accountability to these types of over-promises as its not really regulated like a sweepstakes or other free contest. And providing no easy to understand rules keeps anyone from figuring out how to actually receive the top amounts.

Not sure that is what's going on in this case, but without accountability or penalties for bad behaviors this is likely to continue to be the case. No fine print necessary.

To save you the click:

> We have not received $5,000 in AWS credits. But now the good news: We have still received $1,000 in AWS credits.

Is the era of cloud credits over? It's been a while since I cared, but back in the olden days I had GCP/AWS credits to the tune of $100,000.

MSDN Subscriptions still have them - but of course you’re still paying thousands of USD/year for the subscription and the credits you get included are a tiny fraction of that - and it’s not like it’s costing Microsoft anything to provide that either.

Microsoft has a solution they call Action Pack [1] where you pay ~$400/yr and get $100 in Azure credits each month. So basically $400 gets you $1200 worth of credits.

[1] https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/action-pack

$100k? That’s amazing. How did you manage that?

I'm not sure what the process is now, but previously it seemed if you were part of any accelerator, or raised money from a VC both AWS/GCP would give you 100k.

Here's a link I found from Google (not sure how up to date it is): https://www.joinffl.com/cloud-credits

Digital Ocean hands out credits pretty often. I actually just got my first bill of the year this month after running my side project on free credits for months. Usually it's things like testing a new service or doing a survey. I'm not sure what it takes to get these credits, I've been a customer for nearly a decade but my average monthly spend is only like $20-$30.

With the Microsoft Startup program, you get like 150k in Azure credits.

I used Atlas and got the full 5K from AWS last month. Digital Ocean denied me any credit at all even after I followed all the many steps and sent screenshots of the Atlas signups and all our sensitive company info. But I don't think much of their service so whatever. I would suggest people avoid going through the DO process, it's a scam to collect information on new companies.

There does not appear to be any fine print at least as seen on the only three pages documenting the program at the time of my comment (https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astripe.com+"%245%2C00...):

• https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/details

• https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/next

• https://stripe.com/atlas

I've archived the pages for the record:

• /details: http://archive.vn/xRojd and https://web.archive.org/web/20200707231048/https://stripe.co...

• /next: http://archive.vn/5eyFp and https://web.archive.org/web/20200605003821/https://stripe.co...

• /atlas: http://archive.vn/5m2s2 and https://web.archive.org/web/20200707231646/https://stripe.co...

CoreSet, you may be owed $4,000 in AWS credits from Stripe.

I was assuming the $5k would be like a certain amount of credit towards S3, a certain amount towards RDS, a certain amount towards load balancers, a certain amount towards video transcoding, etc. so if you don't use video transcoding, then you can't access the credit earmarked for that service.

but is it literally just a dollar amount that offsets your AWS bill, and you get some variable amount? This post doesn't actually seem to include any information about "what you actually get" other than to say you don't get $5k.

It says that they got $1,000 instead of $5,000.

I recently applied for the 5k too, got 1k. A bit misleading, but sure... credits are credits.

Why did you only get 1k? Are there different tiers as well?

What's the fine print or reasoning that accounts for the difference between what you're led to believe you'll get and what you actually get?

Honestly, no idea. I didn't mind enough to check. Our costs are low.

That's what like, 10 gigs of data transfer on AWS? :p

That's strange, we got $10k in DO, and $20k in GCP. Both lasted 1 year. The only one I really used was GCP, which expires for me in August.

I'm not sure if I regret it or not. I was able to learn a lot and work with technologies I probably wouldn't have but for the credits, but now I'm stuck trying to figure out how bring down our $500/mo spend a few months after we already launched.

AWS Activate Founders Package offers $1,000 direct from Amazon.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/02/aws-launc...

This is straight up false advertising in my opinion. You're paying for a product that includes $5k in AWS credits but you're only receiving $1k in credits.

This article doesn't go beyond the title but I assume like any AWS funding you have to show the ARR (Annual reoccurring revenue) potential for the future. I know for a fact that they'll dish out $1m+ but it has to eventually lead to revenue for them.

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