I actually signed up for separate new account, to double check that my business account was not being favored or rigged in "private beta"

Its really not that hard to validate this claim, you can just rent for 4 hours at $1.50 - which is under $50

Also like I said, they are *not* the only one, shop around

I signed up and don't have access currently. My point that the prices are low because demand is limited because of lack of users still stands. Once people sign up and hear about it, the price will increase substantially.

We are actively using sfcompute at the moment. It's a great product for us where we have a backlog of R&D workloads that can be incrementally run in short bursts.

I think you're right about the small private beta resulting in relatively low demand. But it's also a different value prop. If you need a large cluster for a reasonable period of time, you're not paying $1/hr. But if you can use the remnants of someone who contracted for a large allocation, but doesn't need part of it, they can offer it into the market and recoup what would otherwise just be wasted hours.

Currently they have some issues around stability, and spin up times are longer than ideal (ca. 15 min), but the team is super responsive and all of these are likely to be resolved in the near future. (No affiliation, just happy users rooting for the sfcompute team).

They might be and thanks for warning about that one company - but if this is anything like renting 3090s (ignoring the period of time during crypto rises), the prices really can go low to a loss level, I guess sunk cost crisis for the owners or the inertia of not pulling them out and selling them hits hard.

As an advisor to those guys, I take a great deal of objection with you calling it a scam. It's not a scam. They're testing things out, so the price is low and not many people can use it... because they're testing. That isn't a scam.

They are advertising a ridiculously low price for their GPUs that can't be rented.

If a store advertised $0.50 burgers, but when you visit, they say they're not for sale, wouldn't you consider that a scam?

Hi! I run sfcompute.

We don't have a limited number of slots!

We just go down a lot. It's VERY beta at the moment; we literally take the whole thing down about once a week. So if we know of some major problem, or we're down, we just don't let people on (since they'll have a bad experience).

You're right though that the prices are probably lower because of this. That's why we have a thing on our website that says "*Prices are from the sfcompute private beta and don’t represent normal market conditions."

If you'd like on anyway, I can let you on, just email me at evan at sfcompute, but it may literally break!

If I may recommend: put a note where people will see those prices so that they understand those prices are unlikely to remain. If the outcome of your current UX is people thinking you're a scam, you have a problem that will last as you start to scale. It's hard to measure now, but it's harder to fix later.

Also, I'm really impressed at how great your replies about your product are! You're a gem.

> put a note where people will see those prices so that they understand those prices are unlikely to remain.

Yup, shall do!

> Also, I'm really impressed at how great your replies about your product are! You're a gem.

Thank you! :D