For startups, understanding a cloud services bill can be a complicated process.
Sometimes a company is overpaying for a server they're not fully using, or there's a hidden cost increase that can catch them off guard. Cloud computing waste is a multi-billion dollar problem each year, with 35 percent of an average cloud customer's bill being wasted spend, according to cloud resource management firm RightScale.
But along with saving money, sometimes companies just needs better, simpler understanding of their cloud bill. That's where Chicago startup CloudForecast comes in.
CloudForecast helps startups and mid-sized firms with their cloud cost management, specifically for Amazon Web Services. Co-founder and CEO Tony Chan said engineering teams often don't have the time to do a deep analysis of their AWS bill to determine exactly where costs are coming from and if there's wasted spend. And the bill itself can be complicated to fully understand.
"It's atrocious," Chan said. "The pricing structure is really complicated ... The big thing we’re trying to do is provide visibility for engineers to better understand where their costs are going."
Chan launched CloudForecast in 2017 alongside co-founder Francois Lagier. The startup has been intentionally bootstrapped to date, reaching six figures in annual reoccurring revenue last year. It's also profitable, Chan said. It counts companies like dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, online mortgage lender Better.com, and web design platform Webflow among its customers.
It was also recently accepted into the spring accelerator program at TinySeed, a fund that provides funding to bootstrapped companies. CloudForecast raised $180,000 from TinySeed.
CloudForecast provides companies with a daily AWS report that's simple and easy to understand, Chan said. It gives a breakdown of costs that are increasing or decreasing, and identifies services that are costing the company excess money. The goal, he said, is to help companies not be caught by surprise when their AWS bill arrives.
Chan was previously on the leadership team at Perfect Audience, an ad-tech startup that was acquired for $25.5 million, and Lagier was a former senior software engineer at Twitter. The two believe they've created a solution for companies struggling with AWS billing headaches, and are helping engineering teams get back to what they do best: building.
"For the most part, engineers don’t want to spend time looking at financial numbers. They want to build things and products, and solve technical problems," Chan said.
