The reason the new rounds cost so much is because they are already successful. They still do them basically cause they are nice people, and want their forum friends to be able to get in on it. I think Jason (their el Presidente) said he wants about 10% to be “friends” who they just host for kicks (i.e. free).

When I signed up, TextDrive didn’t exist. It was announced on Dean’s Textpattern site, and they decided to fund it via 200 $200 “VC” accounts. I think I’m #87. They sold all 200 in like a day or two.. lifetime hosting at a host that didnt even exist at the time. Purely purchased on speculation.

They used that $40k to fund and build something spectacular. It’s still bumpy, but the things they are doing are great. Even at $400, it would be worth it… but it takes patience. Sometimes things aren’t yet as stable as they will be.

And yeah, I ahve lots of ideas… but implementing them is another story.

How is the administration over there? I heard they were offering a new Ruby-on-Rails control panel that they built in-house.

Speaking of ambitions, I just had an idea today that would be really interesting to go live with, but I got to realizing that in order for it to be worth it, it actually has to result in a net gain from my time and effort. This is, of course, as opposed to the blog, which pays for itself in terms of hosting, but that’s about it: the rest of my time gets sucked into a black hole. This is probably the subject of another post, though.

Basically, I have cutting edge web hosting that meets and exceeds my needs, I have it for life, and I never have to pay another cent.

I’m not doing anything with my extra space, other than just knowing that it’s there for when and if I scale out my ambitions.

Course, if you didn’t advertise, how would they know?

My ISP, serverbeach, encourages reselling space so long as you don’t sell shell accounts. (You can give a shell account to customers that need one to maintain what they are doing, just not allowed to sell just a shell acount).

The last provider i was on, site5, forbid reselling space for shared solutions. But on dedicated servers it was fine.

Besides reselling space to other people (only a few now, though) i’m hosting websites and mailing lists for 2 local charity groups with my extra space and bandwidth.