Google offers a really strong startups program, which includes >$100k GCP credits and a handful of other goodies like 12 months free of Workspace Business Plus (normally $22/user/month). While not a huge benefit in monetary terms, it’s a few hundred free dollars for a productivity suite I found really good while I was at Google (gmail, cal, docs, sheets, meet, spaces, etc.), would have bought anyway, and would recommend to other founders.

That said, the benefit is is challenging to access because you can’t claim if you have an existing paid Workspace account (custom domains require paid accounts) and you can’t apply for the startup program without an email whose domain matches your website.

The solution is as follows:

1. Create a throwaway email address with your website domain and host. Note to Google product teams: let people apply with a gmail address like your peers; this is unnecessary friction
2. Apply for Google Startups with that email address.
3. If you are accepted, Google Startups will grant you GCP credits and email you a second form to fill out to request access to the free Workspace benefit. It requires your billing account number to match to the original application. Be careful that you use the billing account to which your credits are assigned. You may have a different personal one from previous projects.
4. Wait 24 hours for the team to approve. Note that the team denied mine the first time around. I resubmitted the same form and it was approved the second time. Note to Google product teams: fix this and auto-approve. 24 hours is too long in startup time.
5. Once the credit is granted and you have a code, login to admin.google.com and add the Workspace service (you should only have Cloud Identity Free, which automatically gets assigned with a GCP account).
6. Change your DNS records to point MX and related records to Google from your previous mail host.
7. Add users!

Overall, I’m really happy with Workspace as a collaboration product, but there are a few huge problems with this on-boarding process that I’d love the Google product team to fix if they want to become the default over the existing startup stack (Slack, etc.).

1. Auto-approve applications or better yet don’t require a second form. If you gave me $112k in GCP credits, you can probably assume I’m not a crook and autogenerate me a Workspace code worth a few hundred dollars.
2. Let founders apply with a gmail address. Requiring the creation of a throwaway email address is a waste of time and/or money if people are using a paid service. Microsoft and Amazon both allow this.
3. Absolutely under no circumstances use classifiers designed for consumer applications in enterprise. We spent a few days fighting to onboard new users because the accounts kept getting suspended. This is totally unacceptable in enterprise. You have to assume someone in your startup program with a paid account is not going to abuse the system. I still have no idea what was triggering the suspensions and have more empathy for people who get de-platformed now.