
An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits - CoreSet
https://formcake.com/blog/how-an-email-got-us-five-thousand-aws-credits
======
nate
An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all".

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.

~~~
wastedhours
Cannot agree more with the concept of just showing up. It's remarkable what
you can get done by being, friendly, open, honest, just asking, and then
delivering.

------
cactus2093
In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company
that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage
VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS.

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?

~~~
vincentmarle
> In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company
> that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage
> VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or
> AWS.

This seems very backward, because you also don’t really need those credits
anymore at that point.

~~~
chickenpotpie
$100k is another employee for free. That's a significant sum for an early
stage startup.

~~~
icheishvili
Why should startups backed by powerful institutional capital get more credits
from AWS than ones that are bootstrapped and hurting for cash much more?

~~~
avianlyric
Because they’re more likely to succeed and spend real cash with AWS later.

Amazon’s a business, not a charity.

------
Abishek_Muthian
This type of infrastructure credits can really accelerate a bootstrapped
startup, unfortunately almost every major provider of such freebies have now
moved on to 'Contact your nearest Accelerator/VC' type model.

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.

~~~
odomojuli
Dude. WHAT are you doing.

I understand that your situation mandates a bit of pragmatism in order to
survive.

If that is the case, why are you painting a target on your back?

Do you seriously think nobody at Facebook reads this?

You just admitted, with your REAL NAME, that you basically lied to Facebook
about information that actively poses a liability to them and took their
money.

I am seriously baffled as to why you think this comment was a good idea.

I am not trying to antagonize you, but highlighting the fact that you are
vulnerable while publicizing information that exacerbates the situation does
not align here.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
I told Facebook doesn't know "I'm disabled" that's all, To imply I got
selected meritoriously.

Obviously everything about my Startup was part of my application details,
since my application was hosted on Facebook platform(messenger app) it knew
the statistics as well and I believe that's the reason it got selected.

Then again, its Facebook we are talking about here, it might even know what I
had for breakfast the day I applied.

But I believe you made that comment out of concern of my well-being, I
appreciate that and I apologise if my sentence formation caused unnecessary
confusion.

P.S. I use my real name here to own accountability of the things I write here
and to ensure I don't compromise my integrity in the lure of anonymity/pseudo-
anonymity(No offence to anyone who don't use their real name, I understand).

~~~
odomojuli
Understood. Definitely an overreaction on my part. Just a little weary from
how exclusive these applications can be and what the consequences can look
like.

No need to apologize.

Wish you well.

------
avthar
> Send that one last email. Even if it seems like a bit much, or things are
> settled, just be sure you ask and give the other person a chance to help you
> in ways you can't predict

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.

------
dna_polymerase
Nice to hear Stripe actually caring for their customers.

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.

------
dekhn
when I worked for a startup, an email got us $250K in credits. That was enough
to run the compute for the company for at least a year. Now, we had a nice
deal with our VCs, and AWS really liked us, but it really was a "asking made
the difference".

------
gdulli
> Stripe monitored the developer community enough to see our initial posts

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.

~~~
exhaze
I can't think of any other company that bends over backwards to please
engineers who use their platform (and, by extension, the people who visit this
site) more than Stripe. Back in 2013, when my co-founder and I started a
company and later got into YC, my co-founder went thru every circle of hell in
order to fix all the mistakes we made when we incorporated. If Stripe Atlas
had existed back then and we'd used it, this would just be a non-issue. Unless
you're an expert in the technicalities of startup incorporation/bylaws/etc,
the value Stripe Atlas provides is huge and it just doesn't make sense to me
why someone would pass on it.

------
jkristobans
Good old email and persistence.

------
beamatronic
Wonder how much bitcoin an unscrupulous person could mine with that $5k of
credits.

~~~
goatinaboat
Less than $5k

~~~
theelous3
But 5k in credits is worthless to someone who doesn't need them, so even if
it's 1c, that's something. (Or really, so long as it's more than you can sell
the account for.)

~~~
dbsndust
Interesting point. What's the going rate on AWS accounts that come with
credits? Is there a marketplace for this?

~~~
nrmitchi
IIRC credits are non-transferable for exactly this reason, and also why
billing information is required (even if you have credit). "Selling" a full
account with credits (or access to that account to use the credits) would be
super risky since it's still tied back to you, you will definitely be selling
for less than the credit amount, and you would be on the hook if AWS
invalidated those credits after-the-fact.

