Over the past year, they’ve deepened their focus on helping startups scale and thrive in the cloud, including launching new resources and mentorship programs, hosting their first-ever Google Cloud Startup Summit, growing our team of startup experts, and more.

With the new year in full swing, I’m excited to roll out several new offerings and updates designed to support startups even more effectively.

First, they will align Google Cloud’s startup programme with Google for Startups to ensure startup customers enjoy a consistent experience across all of Google - including Google Cloud infrastructure and services - and to provide founders access to Google mentors, products, programmes, and best practices. Going forward, our programme will be the Google for Startups Cloud Programme.

Next, they’ll deepen our commitment to supporting founders that are just starting out, when access to the right technology and expertise can have a massive impact on their company’s growth trajectory. Early-stage startups are particularly well-positioned to move quickly and solve problems, but they need the ability to scale with minimal costs, to pivot to address a new opportunity, and to leverage expertise and resources as they navigate new markets and investors.  

Supporting early-stage startups is a key goal of the Google for Startups Cloud Programme, and they announce a new offer for funded startups that will make it easier for these companies to get access to the technology and resources they need. 

Providing new Google Cloud credits for early-stage startups

Starting now, the Google for Startups Cloud Programme will cover the first year of Google Cloud usage for investor-backed startups, through series A rounds, up to $100,000. For most startups, this will mean they can begin building on Google Cloud at no cost, ensuring they can focus on innovation, growth, and customer acquisition. In their second year of the programme, startups will have 20% of their Google Cloud usage costs covered, up to an additional $100,000 in credits.

This new offering will make it simpler for startups to access to Google Cloud’s capabilities in AI, ML, and analytics, and to rapidly build and scale on Google Cloud infrastructure with services like Firebase and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Connecting startup customers to Google know-how and support

It is known that navigating decisions as a fast-scaling startup can be challenging. Last year, we introduced our global Startup Success Team as a dedicated Google Cloud point of contact for startups in our program as they build. Now that this team is fully up and running, they're expanding it to all qualified, early-stage startups in the Google for Startups Cloud Programme. These guides will get to know the unique needs of each startup throughout their two years in the programme, and will help connect them with the right Google teams to help resolve any technical, go-to-market, or credit questions along the way. As a customer grows in their usage and expertise with Google Cloud, they’ll be connected to our startup expert account teams to continue their journey.   

The Google for Startups Cloud Programme joins Google’s numerous offerings for entrepreneurs. In addition to receiving mentorship, tailored resources, and technical support from Google subject matter experts, participating startups are eligible for additional Google product benefits to help their business including Google Workspace, Google Maps and more. Founders can take advantage of workshops, events, and technical training courses, as well as Google for Startups programmes and partner offerings. They can also tap into a supportive network of peers through our new C2C Connect digital community just for founders and CTOs building on Google Cloud. 

Helping startups focus on innovation, not infrastructure

Our goal is to help startups move fast now, without creating technical debt that will slow them down later. With our fully managed, serverless offerings like Cloud Run, Firestore, Firebase and BigQuery, startups can spend their time on their roadmap, rather than infrastructure management. And as they go from MVP to product to scale, startups don't need to overhaul their architecture - Google Cloud services scale with them.

That’s how Nylas, a startup focused on business productivity, is able to rapidly scale its platform and support larger, enterprise customers, all while growing its revenue by 5X. FLYR Labs is helping airlines better manage revenue and forecast demand, with a platform powered by Google Cloud data and AI capabilities and running on GKE. Sniip is rapidly growing adoption of its app that helps people more easily track and pay bills, leveraging GKE to scale quickly and Cloud Run to empower their developers.

With Google Cloud, startups benefit from a business and technology partnership to help them build and go to market. They'll work with founders from the early prototypes to global scale as they expand to new markets. Startups around the world are choosing to build with Google Cloud.