Collaborate smarter with DigitalOcean Hatch’s January 2023 Startup of the Month: Ourspace

Hatch is DigitalOcean’s global program for startups that helps businesses grow by offering infrastructure credit, support, a welcoming community of fellow builders, and so much more. The startup of the month series highlights how standout program participants use Hatch to flourish. Hatch’s January 2023 startup of the month is Ourspace!

For startups and enterprises alike, team design and collaboration can be challenging, especially as team structures change. Ourspace brings clarity to opaque org structures and the question of “Who owns what?” by building a collaborative team design platform that helps product and tech leaders make smarter team design decisions and keeps every employee in the loop. Building a central source of truth to help technical leaders increase their teams’ cohesion and productivity, Ourspace utilizes DigitalOcean’s Hatch program to help them build, test, and deploy their team-focused product. Ourspace has raised $2.5 million dollars in funding from seven investors, including Hatch partner Seedcamp.

For Ourspace, it was important to choose a cloud provider that would accelerate their growth while giving them the support they need to build and scale their infrastructure. That’s why they chose the DigitalOcean’s Hatch program to get started on their company journey.

How Ourspace uses the Hatch program to build on the cloud

Choosing DigitalOcean to get their product off the ground was an easy decision for Ourspace. The Hatch program offered access to the products, credits, and support that set them up to succeed. DigitalOcean’s simplicity over its cloud competitors was key to Ourspace’s decision to build on DigitalOcean:

“Choosing to use DigitalOcean rather than a more complex, configurable cloud platform has been one of the best technical decisions that we’ve made. It’s allowed us to focus on building features rather than messing around, configuring permissions, roles, and [other] random stuff that you end up doing in AWS.” – Mark Allen, Ourspace’s Co-founder and CTO

The Hatch program allows for startups to not only build their cloud platform, but also to experiment with different DigitalOcean products and plan their future infrastructure. Ourspace is currently using the following DigitalOcean products to build their platform:

1. App Platform helped them quickly get off the ground and have visibility over deployment. App Platform allows teams to build and deploy their applications without having to manage their underlying infrastructure.
2. Managed PostgreSQL provides fast and reliable end-to-end management for their databases.
3. Spaces object storage allows for simplicity and S3-compatibility, making it easy to integrate with other products.

We love listening to what our customers have to say, so we appreciate that Ourspace was eager to share their feedback with us. They constantly provide feedback to our support team to help us improve our products so they can better fit the needs of startups.

Overcoming obstacles with Ourspace

As with many startups, Ourspace’s journey from idea to launch wasn’t always easy. DigitalOcean’s intuitive products, cost-effective pricing, and overall simplicity has allowed the company to worry less about their cloud infrastructure and more about their future. With the peace of mind to put their full focus on business strategy, they recently made a strategic pivot—helping companies downsize rather than scale in the current downturn economy. Along the way, the Ourspace team has learned valuable lessons about building a business that other entrepreneurs can learn from… Here are wise words from Ourspace Co-founder and CTO Mark Allen:

1. Unlearn what doesn’t serve your business. You might not know what you have to unlearn until after you need to, so it’s important to avoid complacency. Understand that what made you successful before might not be what you need to be successful now.
2. Be willing to pivot. Understanding macrotrends in the spaces you’re serving is important. The needs of your customers might change; if you don’t pivot with them, there won’t be any space or demand for your product.
3. Stay focused. Every customer that you speak to will have a wishlist of features they want to see or things they want to change about your product. It’s important to listen to them, but filter requests based on your product priorities so you’re building the right features.

Grow your startup with us

Our global startup program Hatch is focused on providing founders with the speed, flexibility, and power they need to scale their digital infrastructure. Apply to the Hatch program to grow your startup today.