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raiyu | 2 years ago

Cofounder of DigitalOcean here, I might have some relevant experience =]

Started in the web hosting space 20 years ago, back then it was just managed hosting, then virtualization, and eventually we built DigitalOcean as a product business offering cloud computing (though the initial iteration was more of a VPS with grander visions).

I don't think there is anything wrong with being in the colocation space. Instead of assuming you are in the wrong space, maybe ask yourself why it may be the right space. In order to compete with AWS and DigitalOcean you will need a bunch of programming and a decade to build out a fully featured cloud (Maybe you could do it in 5 years).

But personally I think the datacenter space is fantastic. And if you look at what has happened in the datacenter space in mature markets like the US there is a ton of consolidation. And any provider that sets up a decent datacenter from the concrete foundation up gets acquired for a rather sizable return.

You could join the race that everyone else is in (Cloud, AI, etc.), or you can look into becoming a large datacenter provider in your developing country. Because that is significantly harder in other aspects (physical construction vs virtual), but at the same time also quite lucrative. Just look at Equinix. They certainly aren't doing poorly at all.

And btw, it's easy to see other people's success and think that you should be further ahead, but I just wanted to say that we all start at 0 and then go to 1 before we can get to 1,000 and beyond and so congrats on building a business from scratch that looks like it's doing well.

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im_so_dumb|2 years ago

Thank you for your answer, it's really kind. And by the way, congratulations about DigitalOcean, your product is so cool that the ice gets jealous.