[mosquito242]

generally speaking as a startup, I'm not hyper-worried about spending 5K in hosting costs and unless you're an entirely social/pre-revenue startup, by the time you're spending 5K in hosting, your business is starting to make some decent revenue.

I'm much more focused on getting and having enough users that I get to worry about spending 5k on hosting.

[cperciva]

I think you're missing my point. Tarsnap has no trouble paying its AWS bills, which are well over $5k/month. I'm not worried about spending $5k.

But at the same time I can't think of anything I could spend 20 minutes on which would create more than $5k of value. $1 of AWS credits = $1 less expenses = $1 more profits = $1 more revenue.

[mosquito242]

I understand what you're saying, but my argument is that the 5K in credits are actually of fairly low value to the startups getting office hours, because they don't have real profits/revenue at that stage, at least not enough where 5K makes a difference to the long term survival of a startup.

If I'm a very early stage startup, I'm worried about being alive next year. Yes, 5K may help, but that 5K will likely not make a significant difference in my company's prospects. 20 minutes with an advisor at YC could completely change my company's trajectory.

I'd imagine there are very few companies that apply, and then get selected for office hours, that will walk away from the meeting saying "I'm so glad I did that because I got 5K in Amazon credits." That said, it is still a great perk.

[sharemywin]

If a founder works 10k-15k/hrs on a unicorn over 5 years its like 15k/hr for every hour they spend on it.

[leereeves]

It's more than 20 minutes including preparation and travel time.