DigitalOcean, a cloud platform built for developers, today announced Hatch, an incubator program that is designed to support the next generation of startups as they launch and scale.
The program gives startups access to DigitalOcean’s cloud for one year, giving them up to $100,000 in infrastructure credits as well as free technical training, mentorship, priority support, and opportunities to connect with other startups, accelerators, and investors. This allows entrepreneurs to focus on their business and worry less about infrastructure.
Hatch is an extension of DigitalOcean’s established partnerships with incubators and venture funds like Y Combinator, Techstars, and 500 Startups. During the past few years, DigitalOcean has powered the applications and production workloads for more than 800 startups in these accelerator programs by offering support and use of its infrastructure.
DigitalOcean is piloting Hatch with 100 startups and is set to bring on another group of funded startups from around the world this year.
DigitalOcean has its roots in the Techstars accelerator program, a program designed to help entrepreneurs launch their companies, and it understands that cloud use takes a heavy toll on entrepreneurs’ capital required to launch a business.
DigitalOcean is essentially doing what Amazon Web Services (AWS) is doing, except on a much smaller scale. Both cloud platforms rent (or give) out space for organizations to run their applications and workloads. AWS does have AWS Activate, which comes with the AWS free Tier, giving users 12 months of AWS capabilities for free — although DigitalOcean says that it is trying to differentiate itself via support services.
In July 2015, the company landed an $83 million Series B, bringing the company’s total funding up to $123.4 million to date. The funding was used to build up its team and add features to its cloud, indicating its expansion in startups and developers using the platform.
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