Since the purpose of our product is to give each user his or her own execution environment to freely explore the software that stacktile is helping to demonstrate, we need to give that user access to his or her own container.
Perhaps the confusion is coming from the fact that a stacktile workflow is more than "pre-known" static content -- it is markdown coupled to a an interactive, running shell process in which code can be executed.
>"Perhaps the confusion is coming from the fact that a stacktile workflow is more than "pre-known" static content"
We know this. People are saying that you need to have some sort of "pitch" that can't be overloaded by too-many users.
So, either you provision a lot more containers to handle spikes like the ones HN gives.
Or, you scale automatically to handle traffic-spikes. Or, you do some sort of caching. Or, you have an explainer video/tutorial, something.
Just because your product is "interactive", does not mean you have to have an interactive sales-pitch. Because right now, you're losing the valuable attention of HN-eyeballs.
The big confusion is that nothing even says what this is truly about before you say "here, try it out". I can understand that having to spin up a linux container per user means there are large resource costs, but I don't understand why you need a linux container to make an interactive tutorial. Further reading on the page clarifies that you are giving terminal access to the linux container and such, but the initial "above the fold" content makes no mention of that, and nor does the "We can't right now, give me your email and I'll tell you when page". Knowing what's involved, I can now understand it, but from a fresh slate, it (to be blunt) looks like you either don't know what caching is, or your system is shit. You might consider an explanation of all that stacktile does on that signup page, so people can see "oh, it's giving me shell on a fresh container, of course that needs lots of resources and such".
I think the main point you're not taking yet Dan is that you SHOULD be able to accommodate every user in your sales pipeline demo.
Even if you fake it with pre-baked results or something in the meantime, Pick a sample->click next->load static html.
If they want to try out their own markdown, then worry about spinning up a container.
Perhaps the confusion is coming from the fact that a stacktile workflow is more than "pre-known" static content -- it is markdown coupled to a an interactive, running shell process in which code can be executed.
I hope that helps clarify