Startup Programs Has anybody tried applying to both Google Startup Program and Microsoft Startup Program? 🙂 Can you only apply to one? any drawback to applying to both? any other experience you want to share? 😄

We use the AWS program. I'm sure @Bill Tarr can add a lot more about it, but the only gotcha I think you should be aware of is that you get $N over M month, so you get more benefit if you ramp up your usage fast. Our product ended up being efficient, so it is unlikely that we'll use even 10% of the total value by the time our startup-period is over. It is very tempting to push fast with GTM and not think about efficiency things around multi-tenant and such. "All those services are free for now, so lets take the shortest path to customer value" On the other hand, it is a bit unlikely that you'll rewrite your architecture when the startup timeline is over. So we are focusing on building the right architecture and not counting on those free services, since they won't be free forever. But it isn't an easy choice to make.

Thanks @Gwen Shapira. You said it better than I possibly could with your first hand experience. The AWS Activate program is our version of a startup credits program. The credits do expire over time, I can't speak to the specifics of $$ and months, they are decided case by case. I've unfortunately experience the problem @Gwen Shapira mentioned with the customers I've worked with, and some choose to defer applying for the program until they have enough built, or customers onboarded to have a reasonable expectation they could use all or most of them - that's a hard position to take in the early stages though.... Add to that evaluating the operational cost of the workload they are building is easier to defer if you just burning credits. Regardless of your choice of provider - try to develop a relationship with your account team. Not easy in early stage, but try anyway. They are your best route to funding, funding extensions, POC credits, and any other benefits the providers can offer.