- Google Cloud’s startup ecosystem director Ryan Kiskis joined from Amazon Web Services last August.
- He joined in part because he’d noticed startups switching from AWS to Google Cloud.
- Google Cloud relaunched its startups program in January to make it more useful for young firms.
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For seven and a half years, Ryan Kiskis led Amazon Web Services’ startup strategy, helping the cloud giant work with venture firms and startup incubators to get young companies to build their businesses on its cloud.
Meanwhile, he remember being struck by how Google Cloud was increasingly competing with AWS to win over startups. Sometimes, existing AWS customers would even make the switch over to Google: He pinpoints ad firm CitrusAd, health tech firm Augmedix, and banking app Step as all opting to jump ship to Google.
So, when the company contacted him about a job last year, it caught his attention.
Kiskis ended up joining Google Cloud in August as its startup ecosystem director to lead the company’s January relaunch of its own startups program.
Google Cloud has been laser-focused on winning over large business customers in the last two years, but it’s now trying to light a fire under its focus on startups. It wants to expand beyond giving young companies credits (essentially, free money) to get them to build on Google Cloud to adding other forms of support for…
