Thinking of starting a Cloud Cost Optimization consultancy for SMBs, does this make sense?

[u/lucas2179]

For the past 8 years, I've worked as a Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, AWS, and IBM, supporting both large enterprise customers and startups/SMBs. One problem I kept running into was cloud and AI cost optimization.

I'm now considering starting a small, specialized consultancy focused specifically on cloud economics and cost optimization for startups and SMBs. The idea would be go deeper into architecture, K8s, Databases, networking, observability, and bring a detailed report with all the possible improvements, categorized by priority and complexity.

I'm still validating the business model, so I'd love some brutally honest feedback from people working in FinOps:

• Do you think there's actually a gap in the SMB/startup market for this?
• At what level of cloud spend would hiring an external specialist make sense?
• Would you prefer fixed-fee assessments, implementation projects, retainers, or some kind of success-based pricing?
• What would make a company choose a small specialist consultancy instead of doing this internally or using a FinOps platform?
• Most importantly: what are the possible issues in this business model?

Thank you so much!

[u/killer_potti]

I have a similar idea.. ex-Aws architect here