u/Hopeful-Writer2392

Hey,

I've been going in circles trying to figure out how to get cloud credits for my project and could use a reality check from anyone who's been through this.

Here's my situation:

• Solo founder, fully bootstrapped
• No outside funding, no accelerator, not in YC/Techstars/500/etc.
• Building an MVP that needs some real infrastructure (a few GPUs for inference, Cloud Run, BigQuery for analytics)
• I have an LLC but I'm not VC-backed and I don't have a "partner" investor on the approved Google for Startups list

Every path I've looked at for the $2,000 tier seems to require being affiliated with one of their partners (an accelerator, incubator, or VC firm from their list). The $10,000 tier looks even more locked down — basically "be a funded startup with traction."

Questions for people who've actually done this:

1. Has anyone gotten the $2k tier without going through an accelerator or partner VC? Is there a backdoor I'm missing?
2. Does joining a free/cheap "accelerator partner" just to qualify actually work, or do they vet you harder than that?
3. Is the Google for Startups Cloud Program application even worth filling out if you're pre-revenue and self-funded, or will it just auto-reject?
4. Anyone had better luck with AWS Activate or Azure for Startups in the same situation? I keep hearing AWS is way more lenient for bootstrappers.
5. Is it smarter to just eat the cost on the $300 free trial + always-free tier and stop chasing credits?

Not trying to game the system — I genuinely just want to build something without burning my savings on a bill before I have a single user. But every "How to get GCP credits" blog post seems to assume you're already plugged into the startup ecosystem.

Thanks

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone is aware of an official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Hetzner.

I've been searching through the official documentation and GitHub repositories, but I haven't found a first-party implementation that allows LLMs to interact directly with Hetzner Cloud resources (e.g., managing snapshots, scaling instances, or retrieving billing data via the API).

If an official version doesn't exist, are there any community-maintained MCP servers that you would recommend for their stability and security? Alternatively, if you are currently using a custom setup to bridge your AI tools with the Hetzner API, I would love to hear about your workflow or any specific libraries you found helpful.

Thanks in advance for any insights