Server costs can vary, but I would estimate my needs at around $1300+ within 6 months of launch (I will know exactly only once we have launched, I am hoping this turns out to be an understimation ;) and I am looking at service providers such as rackspace.com, servint.com, datapipe.com and serverbeach.com to name a few. Also what kind of servers are we talking here - in terms of hardware? Are you considering a separate db server? Can you refer me to some reliable host who has rack-mounted, dedicated servers at $250 and provides decent support.
I don't know how long most ycombinator companies get by and on how much. It might be interesting to know. I would 'assume' that $15,000 finish in the 3 months. That's a fully loaded cost of $5000 per month. Typically people and hardware are the biggest costs, because there are no employees I think the larger cost may be servers and connectivity. And so it seems server cost is significant. Maybe someone with facts can add to this.
anyway , using your figures, 1300$ for 12 months = (approx) 15 k.
Are you saying a good technical person with about 3 years in the Industry can't get together with a couple of friends to fund their hosting ? (A good dev with 3 years exp can get 15k annual pay easily in Bangalore)
Yes it is a little bit more difficult for people just out of college but hey all of us have to tailor our plans to our resources. If you can manage a decent user base in 3 months (3 months is how long YC funds their teams iirc ... hosting will cost bout 5000 $ - Even two kids just out of college should be able to manage that) you should do well with the vc folks.
Now, if you are saying that you need lots of moolah in the bank before you attempt a software startup, I can only say my perceptions differ.
Maybe you are right and I am wrong. Time will tell.
I am too tired to continue. Been coding the last 15 hours or so. Ciao
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Contributors
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/india/article_1226891.php
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com/
Also: CDAC is doing some interesting work - http://www.cdac.in/
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Ok now to your list of people.
This is good work ! Thanks!
But ... Do you know what these people actually do or are you just pulling names off a google search?
I believe I explicitly asked for names and specific contributions . All those pages are light on the specifics . I gave some examples of specific cntribs earlier.
I asked explicitly for significant contributions with details.
On the linux India list, if you remove all the "internationalization" type of contributors there are a bare handful left. But Do you know if any of those people (good people no doubt) are major contributors to their projects?
As for CDAC, do you know people who work there? I do. They are severely hit be people leaving to -- guess where -- the United States. Many of their projects (not all) don't have much more than web pages. (Like wise for the DRDO - Defence Research and Development Organization for the non Indians reading this).
Again (just to stop arguing _ I will be glad to continue offlist ;-) ) I will concede the point.
The Linux Kernel, GCC and other open source efforts would be hamstrung if all the Indians suddenly disappeared ;-)
You are right. India is a powerhouse of open source contribution. ;-)
This thread has deteriorated too much. Apologies to all for my part in said deterioration.
This is my final post.
Take Care,
Really? my last job at Bangalore was a little bit more than 80,000 $ - 38 lakhs to those who want the Indian equivalent - (but I have about 10 years of experience and if I do say so myself, I am pretty good at what I do.) . I plan to take care of my n hosting for a while.
Do you mind sharing (here) how much you think hosting would cost? YCombinator companies seem to get by for quite a while on comparaitive amounts of money.
But I could be wrong I was estimating about 250 $ or so per month for your own rackmounted boxes to start with.But let's say about 900 $ a month - . Do you seriously estimate spending more than 10,000 $ a year on hosting before hitting ,say, 100,000 users , at which point you'd have no problems attracting funding?
If you have about 2 years of experience, you can earn 10,000 dollars in 6 months (trivially easily) in Bangalore (if you are any good at coding). As I said earlier people just out of college are paid about 1200 $/month.
Also for "significant contributions to Open Source" (by which I mean something like "wrote and maintains the tcp/ip stack in Linux" or "added and maintains SSA based optimizing phase to the GCC trunk" or even "wrote Ruby on Rails or Django" (not things like "contributed documentation to Ubuntu" or "localized Strings to Hindi"), please name specific people and specific achievements. of the magnitude stated above.
And then tell me how many of those people live in India so that folks like YC should look for them here.
And you can't brush the "not resident in India" part away. That is the point. The really good technical people from India move to the USA or Europe for the tech and startup culture (and of course $$$ :-P ).They still do. To find he most talented Indian Hackers therefore, a search in California is better than one in Bangalore. .That was MY point.
Ahh I am spending too much time on this. I have work to do and code to write. Ciao