Expanding Google Cloud’s commitment to startups

This week, we’re excited to host our first ever Google Cloud Startup Summit, where we’ll bring together innovative companies and voices from across startup and investor ecosystems, and highlight some of the amazing work that startups are doing today with Google Cloud.

We’re committed to helping companies build with cloud technology at every stage of their journey, and we believe that Google Cloud can provide a critical foundation for the future, particularly for early-stage businesses.

This week, we’re excited to announce new partnerships and resources to help startups get off the ground and into the cloud, and to help them scale and meet new customers around the globe.

Expanding our work with global VCs to add value for startups

We’re also excited to announce new partnerships with several leading global venture capital firms, including Sequoia in India and Southeast Asia, and partnerships with Greylock, Northstar Group, and Sapphire Ventures to accelerate the adoption of Google Cloud services within their portfolios of startups. Through these partnerships, we’ll develop joint business plans, content, and programming that will enable us to build stronger and deeper relationships with startups, and help them more easily leverage products, know-how, and services from across Google.

The teams at Northstar, Greylock, and Sapphire Ventures share our vision that the cloud represents a significant opportunity for startups to quickly scale and see value, and we’re excited to expand our work together.

“Google Cloud provides startups with an easy-to-use platform and with infrastructure that can support high-growth businesses,” said Rami Branitzky, Partner at Sapphire Ventures. “We’re excited to expand our work with Google Cloud to provide startups with easier access to Google Cloud technology, and with products and services from across Google.”

“Google Cloud makes it easy for the early stage companies Greylock backs to build and scale, and we're thrilled to partner with Google Cloud in supporting startups" said Lee Haney, Vice President at Greylock. 

Rolling out new resources to help startups thrive on Google Cloud

Additionally, this week we are expanding resources and services available to startups through our program in order to help them get the best of Google Cloud technology and mentorship. 

First, we’re announcing a new global Startup Success Team of customer experience and cloud experts across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia who are now available to guide and consult with startups - free of charge - in the earliest days of their growth. This team will be available to consult on topics like product vision, navigating investors, budgets, and engineering, and to help map Google Cloud products and services to help customers meet their goals. We believe this will be a key resource for companies as they start their cloud journeys.

We also know that knowledge-sharing and networking between customers is critical to innovation, so I’m also excited to announce our new Google Cloud Startup Community on the online platform Customer to Customer (C2C). This will be an independent community for startup customers to connect, network, and share knowledge about Google Cloud and the startup ecosystem more broadly. This platform will bring together founders, technology leaders, IT professionals, engineers and more to discuss everything from cloud technology to working with investors and building go-to-market plans. While the community is in private preview today, we expect it will be available to all of our startup program participants this year.

Supporting startups across 128 countries

I’d also like to recognize all of the innovative startups who are working with our program today. Our program now supports customers across 128 countries, helping enable innovative new business models and approaches in industries like digital banking, travel, healthcare, media, gaming, security and more.

For instance, Orca Security, which delivers instant-on security and compliance for customers, without any agents, side-cars, or network scanners. Hands-on support and services from Google Cloud's startup program has accelerated Orca's ability to innovate in the cloud and helped fuel 500 percent year over year growth. Under the hood, Orca leverages Google Cloud introspection capabilities, including temporary GCE snapshots to help customers assess security risks and preemptive virtual machine capabilities to reduce the cost of service for both Orca and its customers. 

Another example is Nylas, a fast-growing San Francisco-based company providing a modern digital engagement platform used by hundreds of thousands of developers and some of the world’s largest companies to connect mission-critical workplace applications such as email, calendar, etc. via APIs, helping to keep teams connected and productive. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), gVisor, and Spanner are helping Nylas deliver its platform at scale and securely, with support from our startup program to help Nylas’ teams get up and running in the cloud.

Our team can’t wait to engage with customers this week and beyond. You can learn more about our startup program here, and join us at the event here.