Startup of the Month: Discz

Hatch is DigitalOcean’s global program for startups that helps businesses grow by offering infrastructure credit, support, a welcoming community, and so much more. The startup of the month series seeks to highlight how standout in-program participants use Hatch to flourish. Discz Music is Hatch’s inaugural startup of the month for September 2022!

It’s hard to find personalized music recommendations using major music streaming platforms. Listeners often find themselves swiping through randomized playlists hoping to find their new favorite song, only to be disappointed by the tedious experience. That’s why Discz Music has been such a hit. Hailing from Y Combinator, the app allows listeners to quickly and easily find new music to enjoy by swiping through 30-second snippets of songs. If you like a song, swipe right, and it will be saved to a playlist for you to enjoy. The approach has gained favor with demographics like sought-after Gen Z and since its launch, Discz Music has gained TikTok virality and shot to the top of Apple’s app store charts.

As a startup, Discz Music needs to move fast, be able to pivot quickly, test new ideas, and ultimately become profitable. They partnered with DigitalOcean’s Hatch program to help them achieve their goals.

Why Discz Music Loves Hatch

DigitalOcean’s Hatch program helps startups get up and running quickly. Hatch provides infrastructure credits that helped Discz build their product, experiment with new features, iterate using customer feedback, and more. Using credits helped Discz find product-market fit and then gave them the opportunity to scale as they found success. The team at Discz also appreciates DigitalOcean’s transparent approach to pricing and the additional support they receive by being a part of the Hatch community:

“Quickly after launch, we scaled and maxed out our limits… so someone on the Hatch [team] reached out just to make sure we were accommodated before we even had to find the right contact. It was really nice to feel taken care of, especially at such a critical time when things are on fire, services are melting, because there’s so much demand.” —Michelle Yin–Discz Music’s co-founder and CTO

Discz Music is currently utilizing three of DigitalOcean’s core product lines to build their product:

1. App Platform to host web servers serving hundreds of thousands of users. Using App Platform allows them to spend less time maintaining backend infrastructure and more time developing their application—a necessity for startups iterating and growing. App Platform’s ease of deployment has helped them to rapidly test and deploy new features during intense product swings.
2. Managed Databases for their persistent Postgres data store and Redis cache. Using Managed Databases allows for Discz to spin high-performance database clusters that are highly scalable without having to worry about maintenance operations or updates.  
3. Droplets to host workers that run Python workers for intermittent background processing. Droplets’ flexibility and reliability allows Discz Music to run different jobs with a click of a button without the fear of downtime.  

Why The Hatch Team Loves Discz Music

First, we love the great product idea. As a team full of music lovers, we understand how hard it can be to find new music. We are huge fans of being able to listen to snippets of songs to find songs that we actually enjoy.

We also love their partnership. Discz Music makes the most of Hatch’s resources, finding what they need in DigitalOcean’s product documents and 7,000+ tutorials or utilizing DigitalOcean’s support when they require a little extra help. 

Finally, we appreciate their commitment to growth and community. As a participant in Y Combinator’s W22 cohort, Discz Music has gained a lot of wisdom about building a successful startup. Michelle Yin, Discz Music’s co-founder and CTO, shared some key takeaways that she learned while building the growing business:

1. Have an entrepreneurial mindset and always listen to your users. Don’t get too attached to your ideas and go where the market wants you to go. You should understand things through data and be willing to drop what you’re doing to shift the product’s direction. Always think about what you want your final product to be and be prepared to change your vision multiple times.
2. As a startup, use your scrappiness to your advantage over larger corporate competitors. You can build features and test them out very quickly when it can take your corporate competitors months or years to build out new features. Make the most out of your small teams!
3. With grit, you can solve any challenge. Everything will work out as long as you keep going and continue to push through every challenge that comes your way.

Get growing

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.