[redis_mlc]

I hate to break it to you, but most startups take 7 - 10 years to reach their stride.

Your choice is to either slog this one, or use the experience and pivot.

BaseCamp - used Ruby on Rails consulting to promote and finance it

Digital Ocean - rode pre-AWS hosting craze

MailChimp - founders worked full-time until enough revenue, rode moderately-early email marketing craze

Are you riding a craze, and/or funded from side gigs?

[mkl]

DigitalOcean was founded 5 years after AWS launched. Were you thinking of someone else?

[redis_mlc]

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought DO was a vanilla VPS like the rest of the bunch, but it's not.

Hats off to DO (2011) for rolling their own cloud after AWS (2006), and gaining mindshare!

Anyway, to the GP: what DO has done when head-to-head with a giant like AWS is pretty rare.

[karolist]

AWS craze started much later than when it was founded. I'd say this was fueled by devops movement and docker, so around 2015