Exact Specs I'd be after are probably:
• 200GB+ SSD (can be HDD though)
• At least 2 CPU cores (of 2GHz+) and 4GB MEMORY (RAM)
• A connection of at least 10MBps and unlmited bandwidth
Have you considered a dedicated server instead of VPS? Most standard dedicated server packages have much more disk space than standard VPS configurations, and the VPS price goes up a lot if you need more storage.
Edit: lite beat me too this suggestion
Without having any experience with the service, I found for example
this: right at your budget, you get much more power: 16 GB ram, 1 TB hdd or 250 GB ssd, and your own 8 core 2.4 GHZ
Intel processor.
For a bit more money you're looking at a
VPS with 2 cores, 2 GB ram, and 500 GB storage.
You could also use cloud.google.com to start with, they're not the cheapest, but offer a free trial worth $300. That gives you enough room to try some things.