Why is this a thing? Not everyone wants to build their startup through venture capital, or an accelerator. This just reinforces the existing "permission-based" startup ecosystem.
Why this part of our industry is exempt from disruption, while everything else is fair game, is a source of constant wonder to me.
Bonus: You can help support underdog upstarts like Microsoft against uncaring tech titans like Google.
I am really leery of these various clouds. They are like architectural catnip-using them requires you to use an order of magnitude greater resources than you would on a single server, but it's really fun to assemble the moving parts.
I feel like some people don't fully recognize how much you can do on a single tiny machine in 2014 if you don't have 29 abstraction layers under you.
It's not just that the cloud stuff is inefficient, but that it's so much fun to write services across ten ephemeral nodes and play with all the cool tooling, instead of hanging your head and learning the simple apache config that will enable you to do the equivalent stuff on a budget linode.
BizSpark is not their cloud offering, it's simply their program for giving away software licenses to startups
Primarily, I hate to tell you, but Linode is now a "cloud" provider; "Cloud Hosting" is the headline on their homepage.
- Nothing stops you from running your full stack on a single large EC2 or GCE or Linode instance.
- Unfortunately, running your whole stack on a single server is a great way to experience a lot of pain when growing or when you write a runaway SQL query that burns all the CPU on the box and starves your Apache server, causing page loads to be multiple seconds and turning away potential users/customers/investors.
- Managing your own OS is a great way for guys who are great at writing Java but not experienced with Linux to have a ton of painful distractions that don't contribute towards building a successful product. Nobody's going to buy your SaaS app because your kernel is always up to date.
- The phrase "the server went down so we can't currently operate our business" drives me absolutely insane in 2014.
This time then can be spent in the actual product, which for a startup I believe it´s a good thing, since providing a good service is something expected by a potential user, but it´s not really going to sell your product.
The same is true in reverse. You start using Microsoft technologies you are trapped there. So, they should really offer a lot more benefits at a lower cost than they are.
e: Glad I chimed in on this downvoted thread to say something completely evident. Thanks.
It got me and 2 friends $150/month in Azure credits, and access to all the Microsoft stack.
They give up to $60.000 to Y Combinator startups and others, see this post:
"Hey guys, Felix from Microsoft here. Some of you may know me as the guy who's working with YC companies. A quick PSA: We sponsor YC companies with $60,000 in free Azure usage. Get in touch with me at felix.rieseberg@microsoft.com if you have any questions!"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715773
In my case it worked out well because it's the stack I use at work, I commented on it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7714403
I still haven't leveraged it like I should (we abandoned the project, but I hope to pick it up and take it to the MVP stage during a short vacation at end of this month)
And I think BizSpark is a great program. IF you are interested in running on the MS platform, or want to integrate with MS "stuff" you can't beat it. Enrollment is simple and painless, it lasts for 3 years, etc. It's one of the things that I'll happily "give the devil his due" for.
There I said something positive about Microsoft. Now I guess I need to go click some rosary beads and say 3 "Our Stallmans" and 5 "Hail Raymonds". :-)
Remember they're giving away $100,000 of credit for free, so they have to make sure it's not being squandered.
I also agree that incubators and accelerators should never be seen as necessary to create a successful startup, and I don't think Google is claiming that either. This is just how they're handling risk. Remember this is a new platform for Google to make money, they're not just giving it away as charity.
Because, of course, no VC-backed company EVER wastes any money.
But the fact that they can make this an eligibility criterion speaks to the conformism in startup culture, and the gatekeeping role of a very small establishment.
Nice branding with "accelerator". What do you think one is trading for money? Even in a simple equity trade you are giving up more than just equity... you are also putting on a leash which will alter your original being. VC's and soul trading aside, it's the exclusion part that makes the deed evil.
And yeah, I expected down voting from a group of people flocking to a VC forum like HN.
Startups long ago stopped being about building innovative business, and about VCs employing a bunch of kids to work really long hours on bad terms to make the VCs rich.
I think it is a legitimate criticism-- not ad hominem-- to say the Bay Area model has produced a bunch of soulless startups. Though of course some do follow this path and still retain their souls.
I guess I would not be so pessimistic and give founders the benefit of the doubt that they think they are building something innovative (a word that means different things to different people).
The summer YC class had a fusion startup and a fission startup if I recall correctly. That is innovation in my book. And I think most startups are trying to change the status quo even to a small extent.
And why does a startup even need to be innovative? In this great talk by the founder of Asana (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3117) the point was made that while they're not curing diseases their software helps the people that are stay organized and save time.
Also consider if you are serving HD video or doing financial number crunching over a large data set in the background.
Remember that we're talking MVP here, not production service. If your service makes it to the front page of HN and then crashes under load, you go to YCombinator or some other accelerator, say "We built a service, it was so popular that it got to the top of Hacker News and then crashed under load. Here's the demo link, and we have a list of X thousand users who signed up to learn more before it crashed." You will be accepted, and then you will have access to the $100K in Google Cloud's program.
The one exception is if they feel that you lack the technical talent to build a scalable system even with hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. In that case, they will tell you "Go find an ex-Googler or ex-FBer to be your technical cofounder and come back to us." In that case, $100K won't make much of a difference, you lack some critical skills to employ that $100K well. If that is your situation, well, I happen to be an ex-Googler with experience scaling Google Search who is in the market for a new project. I have my own ideas but would be happy to abandon them for something with demonstrated traction, so I would be happy to entertain e-mails (my address is in my profile) with a demo link and a spreadsheet with X thousand user signups.
I would, however, consider taking $100k in free hosting from google as a startup because making it free eliminates the cost consideration in hosting choices.
It's not keeping us out of the gate, it just that it reinforces the redefinition of startup to be "Silicon Valley VC type".
EG: 37 Signals would never have qualified, but they were a startup.
It seems likely that if Google made available an offering of, say, $100/mo with strings similar to BizSpark attached that it'd still be attractive to at least a few startups.
https://developers.google.com/startups/
I applied and received $500 in credit for free (also free access to online training and local events). To get 100k in credit would of course be nice, but I would have no way to spend that much in a year.
In the light of this two-tier startup program already existing a lot of comments in this thread become uninformed. Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth (unless it is a Trojan).
Because this isn't free for Google, so they are expending resources building relationships with the customers they think are most likely to provide more business in the future; so they aren't giving to any small business, they are giving it to businesses that have been vetted by groups they trust and are receiving capital with some kind of plan for expansion that would grow the startup's business -- and therefore the business that Google would see from the startup if the startup stayed on Google's platform.
> Not everyone wants to build their startup through venture capital, or an accelerator.
Sure, but the cost to Google to vet each individual startup to see if they were the kind of potential customer they'd like to expend these resources for would drive up the cost of providing the service. Google isn't a charity, its a for-profit business.
$100,000 in service credits plus 1:1 technical architecture reviews plus 24/7 support isn't something even Google can afford to provide to everyone.
So they outsource the work of screening by instead screening a smaller number of accelerators, incubators, etc.
But nitpicking aside, why not have two tiers, one $100k for approved startups, and another with, say, $10k credit and with some support.
Google championed the idea that the road to classification success is a (relatively) simple algorithm paired with a lot of data. This way they could get hundreds, if not thousands of startups to hone their company success estimation algorithms.
There's a million people who could use this $100k to mine bitcoins, run personal servers, do scientific calculations, or more. Google isn't interested in those people: they want to lock in companies and keep them there as they grow quickly. If you worked at Google, what would you propose to catch these long-term valuable customers, without giving away a ton of free infrastructure?
By screening for "you are in an accelerator" you not only have ensured some due diligence has been done, but you also know someone else's money is on the line, so they will keep tabs on them.
Seems a little late to lure them into the Google Platform.
But if some startups have planned for portability and would rather stretch their OpEx runway instead of paying Amazon, switching could make sense.
Hope this helps --
-Brian head of marketing, google cloud platform
My impression is that you can't get started in the EU without at least a little up-front paperwork.
You rarely need permits (if you sell food or medication or something like that you do), you will need to do your filings but you can usually get them deferred for the first year.
I'm talking about the VC/accelerator-backed startups that gain traction and mindshare, solely because of "permission" (otherwise stated "a nod") from VC's or accelerators, when other, better products may exist. The very fact that this program largely eliminates/discriminates against an entire swath of entrepreneurs who DONT want to move to Silicon Valley is closer to my point.
If your server bills are $100k for a first year start-up company, you are doing something VERY VERY wrong.
What's that?! Startups are getting easier and easier to start with no VC involvement, and there is a large community of people doing bootstrapping.
If anything, I'd question who is voting this article up. It's of little use to most of us.
I can´t think of many other places where it would be more relevant.
Of course, it also locks them into Google's ecosystem (practically) when they do hit it big - but I think that's obvious upfront. Why should Google, a for-profit company, gain nothing for its $100,000 (at most)? If you are in one of those accelerators and have a concern about being tied to Google, you're, again, free to go elsewhere.
You get the free cloud for only a year. After that you start paying, and since you’re already there it’s very likely that you’ll proceed with Google. So, they’re not giving away anything, they’re just trying to grab market share before the competitors.
But yes, I think many many governments could do a lot worse than say "have you got a business plan and two paying customers? Here have enough money to live on, got off the dole and we have 15% equity if you become the next standard oil."
And Google has already setup and helped to setup a bunch of startup incubators, so it makes sense to leverage that investment rather than duplicating effort.
Oh well. I understand why Google is doing it, but it's still disappointing.
I want to work on it with my partner a little bit more before we get outside technical help. I'll keep you in mind, though.