Heroku is also misrepresented by my tool. To address that, they gave me the list of the IP Addresses for their front-ends. I haven't updated domain-profiler to make use of that information, but presumably I could use the same technique for Engine Yard. There might be other clever methods to use too. For example. Heroku serves an SSL certificate for "*.heroku.com" – maybe Engine Yard does something simlar?

I'm also making more updates to domain-profiler. Beyond a straight-up survey, I can't think of good ways to accurately detect software and tool choices. You can make some assumptions from URL structures, Javascript library choices, etc. I've also considered scraping job posting sites to "detect" that information too…

For as much as is practical, I'd love to contribute to your survey!

–Joel

This is definitely interesting, and something I have wondered about in the past. I organized an analysis of this type early on for Boston '09, and also included software and tool choices; these and related decisions are significant expenses in time and money for a fresh startup. I'm inclined to work on organizing this information for the benefit of future teams in both programs. Is this something you would also be interested in contributing to?

One inconsistency: a lot of the TechStars teams were using EngineYard, which is represented as Amazon in the charts. I wonder if there is any way to resolve this issue, considering that EngineYard uses Amazon's infrastructure/IPs.

James