Credits for bootstrapped founders

Roughly the self-serve tiers, and they are worth more than founders expect. What you cannot reach without a referral are the six-figure cloud allocations and any program whose requirements name a partner fund, accelerator or incubator. Read that list before filling in anything.

Bootstrapping changes which half of a program page matters. The benefit headline is written for the referred applicant and the requirements list is where you find out whether you are one, and on several well-known programs those two sections describe noticeably different products.

This page assumes you are not joining a programme and not raising, so the question is not how to unlock the top tier. It is what the ceiling is without one, and how to reach all of it rather than the obvious quarter.

The order to do this in

  1. 1

    Read the requirements list first, every single time

    The phrase to look for is a partner, provider or portfolio affiliation. HubSpot for Startups and Zendesk for Startups both require an association with a VC, accelerator or incubator, and neither says so in its headline. Two minutes of reading saves an hour of form filling and a pointless rejection.

  2. 2

    Take every self-serve cloud tier, not just one

    The AWS Activate Founders tier, Microsoft Founders Hub and DigitalOcean Hatch all need no introduction, and nothing stops you holding all three at once. Each is smaller than the figures you have seen quoted, and together they comfortably run a real product for a year.

  3. 3

    Work the tooling perks, because that is where your bill actually is

    A bootstrapped team’s monthly spend is mostly subscriptions, and this slice of the catalog runs to several hundred programs. Individually they are a month or two free. Claimed in one focused sitting they routinely cover most of a small team’s software budget for the first year.

  4. 4

    Prefer the offers with no expiry cliff

    A percentage discount that lapses moves you to list price on whichever plan you chose while it was cheap, which is how a perk turns into a bill. Free tiers, permanent startup pricing and lifetime discounts look worse on paper and behave better in practice.

  5. 5

    Ask about revenue where a referral is required

    Some programs that gate on investor affiliation will look at trading history instead if you ask, because the underlying screen is for a company that exists and pays rather than for an investor. That route is never printed on the form, and the cost of asking is one email.

  6. 6

    Re-check the programs that turned you down each year

    Eligibility rules move, and several programs have widened over the last two years because the referral-only model was costing them customers. A calendar reminder does this job for nothing, and our alerts do it without you remembering to look.

Programs to start with

387 in the catalog. These are the ones worth your first hour.

Which of these do you clear?

Five questions against the real eligibility rules.

Check eligibility

Common questions

Roughly a year of infrastructure plus most of a small team’s tooling, which is real runway and nowhere near the six-figure numbers in the headlines. Those describe partner tiers, and there is no self-serve path to them at any of the major clouds.

Almost never on its own. The uplift is large, and it is bought with equity that costs far more over any reasonable time horizon. Join a programme for the network or the customers, and treat the larger credit tier as a rebate rather than a reason.

Many do, and it usually works in your favour: the caps are set at the top to exclude later-stage companies rather than at the bottom to exclude you. The ones that check for investors specifically are looking for a referral, not a bank balance.

Keep reading

Credits for AI startupsCredits for SaaS startupsCredits for pre-seed and bootstrapped foundersCredits for founders without a US entityCredits for fintech startupsCredits and programs for climate startupsStartup credits in PakistanStartup credits in the United Arab EmiratesStartup credits in India

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