[nullspace]

This is incredible! 500k is a big amount. Realistically speaking most startups would get free hosting for ~3 years out of this.

For the future YC batches - depending on what your company is going to be doing, it would make very little financial sense to NOT host on Azure.

[frandroid]

They'll recoup the value of the entire thing, with extra profit, if even just one of the YC startups using it has explosive growth. It's a smart investment. Even without the money, it's a great technology showcase. YC now gets to give its startups the Oscars giftbag treatment. :)

[jabagawee]

In a way, it's like investing in YC startups then. Give a sizable but not unbearably so amount of money to a large set, hope that statistically these companies have a chance to experience hockey stick growth, and have that one black swan cover all your costs across the whole group.

[longlivegnu]

does azure offer any *nix services?

[aceperry]

You can instantiate ubuntu servers on azure.

[onion2k]

3 years of technical investment is pretty much enough to stop you leaving unless something goes very wrong. This $500k is a small price to pay for a client who goes on to be the next AirBNB or Dropbox. Even just the prestige of having a company like that to draw on for testimonials would justify the spend.

However...

For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience. 5 or 6 of those will burn through $500k in no time compared to the equivalent on a more open platform.

Whether or not to use Azure is certainly NOT obvious.

[phonon]

>they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience

You can spin up bog standard Linux instances if you want. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt...

You don't have to use a MSFT stack.

[dangrossman]

> For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience

Why's that? Azure's just another cloud hosting provider. You don't have to run any kind of Microsoft software on the servers.

[morganvachon]

Exactly, and Microsoft is happy to host your own custom Linux-based environment if you want complete control over your stack:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt...

edit: looks like phonon below beat me to it by a few minutes.

[mark_l_watson]

I have made this comment before but I think that it bears repeating: Azure has good Linux support. I find little difference running Ubuntu VPS's on Azure that on other good platforms like AWS, Google, BlueMix, etc.

[codexon]

You can run Linux on Azure.

[err4nt]

Does the Linux image run virtualized over an MS kernel? I often laugh running MS code in a VM over __nix because when the Guest crashed, my host OS is still running. I cant imagine running a __nix Guest over a MS Host though.

I dont have much experience with MS servers, as I like to get things done, but how are they when it comes to stability?