- CEO and Co-Founder at Cloud Capital
- Cloud Capital helps businesses manage and optimise their cloud spending by means of its finance platform designed for CFOs.
- Ed Barrow launched Cloud Capital alongside co-founders Spencer Pingry and Zack Liscio after successfully exiting multiple startups.
- Barrow now uses his experience to mentor and invest in the next generation of tech entrepreneurs.
Tell Us About Yourself and Cloud Capital
I’m Ed Barrow, CEO and co-founder of Cloud Capital. Together with my co-founders Spencer Pingry and Zack Liscio, I’ve spent the past decade building SaaS businesses across the US and Europe. After working together at Optimizely, we saw the same challenge again and again, cloud spend was spiraling and finance teams had no real visibility or control.
Cloud Capital is our answer to that. We’re building the first FinTech platform designed specifically for cloud infrastructure. Our platform helps CFOs forecast, manage and de-risk cloud spend, turning it from a volatile cost center into a strategic financial asset.
What Inspired You To Start Cloud Capital? What Problem Were You Trying To Solve?
We started Cloud Capital because we’d felt the pain ourselves. At previous companies, we managed cloud budgets that quickly grew from tens to hundreds of millions. Yet finance teams were stuck in the dark, no tools, no insights and no control. Engineers had optimizers, but CFOs were signing off multi-year cloud deals on spreadsheets and hope!
We built Cloud Capital to give finance teams the clarity, control and confidence they need to manage cloud like any other major line item, with rigor and strategy.
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What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge So Far? How Did You Overcome It?
Our biggest challenge is still ongoing, shifting the conversation around cloud from a technical problem to a financial one. Cloud spend has historically been an engineering domain, so introducing a finance-first approach means changing mindsets.
What’s helped us cut through is customer traction. Once CFOs at fast-growing AI and FinTech companies started using Cloud Capital, the value became obvious. That traction helped us raise $7.7 million in pre-seed and seed funding, and the momentum has only grown from there.
Can You Describe A Pivotal Moment That Shaped the Direction of Your Startup?
One moment stands out. An early customer, an AI-native startup, told us they were forecasting cloud costs at 40% of revenue but had no system to manage that spend. That stopped us in our tracks. It was the clearest signal yet that cloud is no longer just a technical line item, it’s a material financial risk.
That insight changed everything. It pushed us to build not another engineering tool, but a finance product, one that helps CFOs plan, control and de-risk cloud spend at scale. It set the direction for Cloud Capital and separated us from the pack.
How Do You Define Success In Business?
As a founder: Success is hearing a CFO say, “I finally feel in control of our cloud strategy.” That kind of impact is what drives me. I also care deeply about how we build, clarity, focus and execution matter just as much as outcomes.
For Cloud Capital: Our goal is to become the financial control layer for the cloud. Success is when every finance team treats cloud infrastructure like any other major investment, strategic, measurable and manageable.
What Advice Would You Give To Someone Thinking About Launching Their Own Startup?
Start with a problem you’ve lived. If it’s a real pain you’ve felt, you’ll have the conviction to push through the hard parts and the credibility to attract customers and investors.
Second, stay close to your users. Early customer feedback shaped everything for us, from product design to messaging. And finally, choose your co-founders wisely. I’m lucky to work with two people I trust completely. We challenge each other, push each other and build better because of it.
What’s Next For Cloud Capital?
We’re scaling fast across North America and Europe, and already powering dozens of high-growth startups across AI, Cybersecurity and FinTech.
Next up: we’re launching a new underwriting layer that lets companies commit to long-term enterprise cloud agreements without taking on all the risk. Think of it as “cloud financing-as-a-service”, enabling smarter commitments without tying up capital.
We’re also expanding integrations across the finance and engineering stack, making forecasting even more automated and collaborative. It’s all part of our mission to build the financial infrastructure for the cloud era, and we’re just getting started.
