#20 Mitch Wainer: The Co-founder Of DigitalOcean – The Cloud Platform for Developers
By: Amit-Krishna Kallakuri-
For this week’s installment, we were delighted at the opportunity to interview Mitch Wainer, the co-founder and head of marketing at Digital Ocean, the third largest cloud hosting platform in the world!. When asked about his company roots, Wainer said “passion is the underline foundation for any root, of anything” and that his passion drove him to co-found Digital Ocean. Being a web developer since the age of 13, Wainer learned about web-hosting and cloud-hosting from an early age and had understood that there were certain “pain points in the market.” One of the pain points was the difficulty to deploy a server online for an application. This set up the basis for what Wainer believed to be the key component of his Digital Ocean’s success: simplicity. His discovery lead to Digital Ocean, a cloud hosting platform that helps businesses and programmers around the world store their information/data through an easy-to-use interface.
While reflecting about the number of people Wainer intended Digital Ocean to serve and the amount it does now, he said “Originally, we thought we could make a cloud hosting platform used by tens of thousands of people in the world. But now we are over a million. Our global market size is 25 million!”. Being a startup in an industry filled with tycoons and booming companies can be quite challenging and frustrating, but Wainer has found that the popularity of his company rose due to the differences that he implemented in Digital Ocean. Unlike other cloud-hosting platforms like Amazon and Microsoft, Digital Ocean focuses on the end-user experience. Wainer directs his attention more on the needs of the developer rather than on the needs of the enterprise. Unlike the other giants in the industry, Digital Ocean is much more supportive of startups and ultimately, Wainer is looking to accomplish the goal of having “the most user-friendly cloud platform.”
When asked about his role in the company, Wainer made it clear to us that as the CMO and Head of Marketing at Digital Ocean, his job is no pushover. Typically, the entrepreneurs interviewed by our team are CEO’s of their company, so this opened up a new perspective. Wainer explained to us how his job revolved around the brand and publicity. The publicity aspect of his job means that whenever he gets the opportunity, Wainer is going to try and “share the story” to the users who utilize his platform.
Following this, our interviewers posed the question, “How did you fund Digital Ocean and what was the process of gaining capital to expand like?”. To this, Wainer responded by explaining how the difficulties of being an unknown name to investors created a challenge when trying to acquire funding for the company. Though he received many rejections, he and his team persisted and stuck with their gut. Eventually, through their effort, determination, and grit, they received their first investment and were able to finally progress to the next stage. Wainer went through a process that involved tenacity and grit, and developed the qualities that define a successful entrepreneur along the way; it is amazing what perseverance can do for you. Wainer informed us about how he had almost thought of pivoting the business, but nevertheless, he decided to brave the dismissals and frustration, and his determination had brought him to an even greater stage than he would have ever dreamed.
To wrap up our interview, we questioned Wainer about his advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders. “Roll up your sleeves and get your hands a little dirty. Don’t wait for people to tell you things”, Wainer exclaimed. Taking the initiative is 100% better than waiting for results and hoping for possible outcomes. Wainer believes in full dedication and resolution; if you are truly committed to a project or experiment, “teach yourself anything you want to continue.” Wainer insinuates that embracing failure is the best way to learn, and urges all young entrepreneurs to make mistakes. At the end of the day, these mistakes are what define us as human beings and help us improve in whatever we are doing. By the end of the interview, Wainer had taught the CompanyRoots team that defeat will always be the best teacher.