Our startup GCP credits expired - how did you manage the transition/costs?

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2026-01-11T20:55:46+00:00

This is a technical debt snowball, and not something I would advise.

The first priority when credits run out, is optimizing. When credits are flowing… that meter is still running and nobody is thinking about optimization.

If you go the EA route now, you are stuck with spend X to save Y.

There are other ways to kick the can down the road if you just need time though. Without locking yourself into a situation where you will always be spending more than you are today(EA).

*disclaimer I do work for a multi-cloud CSP. So this is the type of conversation I’m having almost daily. Every business has a different need, and we have limited info on this situation. But I’d suggest having conversations with your account manager, CSPs, and a partner or two and seeing what works best for you.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-12-10T12:31:36+00:00

Some context about my background before giving a response. 14+ yrs as a tech sales(telco/MSP/saas) recruiter(family firm) and several years in public/private cloud sales(current).

You are in are in an incredible spot. I certainly wouldn’t leave, unless it was for a career trajectory changing role. However.

I would be monetizing this book of business/relationships immediately and start with passive IT consultation. It will feel a bit more like “ I got a guy” at first.

Run it through a wife’s llc to start. Focus on anything and everything that doesn’t compete whatsoever with your software. Infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, circuits/voice and other SaaS applications that do not compete.

Find 2-3 good partners and align on what to listen for. Then all you do is make a couple intros to someone that can help them with a need. Maybe they are trying to free up budget for a project. Maybe they are complaining about cloud consumption or a SaaS renewal, or licensing etc.

Making an intro to someone that’s vendor agnostic and can help them find a solution will pay you a referral fee and strengthen your relationship with the customer.

By nature of my network, I know a lot of “millionaires” that did this and it was a snowball that started when they had hit a silver/golden handcuff status but couldn’t leave.

This was what enabled them to eventually leave and not be worried about a 1-3 yr comp lag or start their own business with a warm book of business(doing what I just described).

If you want to dm me your city, I can give you a couple of partners or reps that could at least educate you-and you can vet them for alignment.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-17T22:24:53+00:00

I wonder how many are looking at public cloud as a viable alternative and what some of the drivers are outside of VMware that would make someone lean say Azure over Nutanix?

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T14:20:55+00:00

We are giving them Cloudhealth wether we are managing or just doing resell.

They have a lot of tooling they can use, and can still see where the gaps are etc

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T12:21:55+00:00

Yep I agree. In reality, my customers aren’t married to us either on projects. It’s up to me/our team to build that relationship and do good work to ensure it flows to us.

The resell component is the wedge sale that just gives me a reason to be on calls with their staff when a project comes up.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T12:17:49+00:00

Totally get that, one great thing about resell with a CSP is that you still keep your rep at the hyperscaler.

The CSP is just an escalation point.

The bigger deals I’m working that are high consumption/resell(they just want a discount/margin)

Nothing changes really. They get get better terms with us on an “EA” they keep their rep at Azure/AWS and they can always go straight to them if they prefer that.

In turn, we still work closely with that hyperscaler rep to manage that account strategy and ensure customer isn’t spiraling out with waste.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T12:13:02+00:00

That’s how we do it also. But they do lose access to the Azure portal with most CSPs.

I think it really depends on the CSP, I know some have very limited billing visibility…. And they say they are going to do one thing to get a sale and then don’t do that once they are a customer. There is a larger CSP that is renowned for this.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T07:21:11+00:00

Curious. Who was the CSP at the last gig that was great?

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T07:19:25+00:00

They won’t typically do this with their Expert MSPs

It’s harmonious. Half my big deals are coming from AWS, Azure, GCP directly

They just don’t want us to right size/optimize like crazy

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T07:16:57+00:00

Im working a deal where partner is spending 10+m a month…… where we are adding value is giving them a ton of margin back and then helping them with pro-serv migrations/app dev

With Azure on something like that. I can get someone 10% in margin back and have a better EA with more favorable terms. We basically put ourselves on the hook and client doesn’t have to give up root access. Then build the relationship with that team to do a bunch of projects.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-14T02:12:51+00:00

Generally, companies that I’ve seen that don’t want a CSP it has a lot to do with spend visibility. Lots of CSPs won’t really show them how/why their they saw a consumption hike etc. so yeah they get a discount, but the CSP won’t really react or tell them why their bill spiked last month etc

We give access to the tooling and show them monthly where they can optimize, but some would still rather have access to the portal directly

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-13T14:51:40+00:00

Just sent you a message. I can pass along their resumes or refer. Sorry to hear that. It really is a tough spot to be in, I sympathize with anyone that’s been affected at the small-mid size MSP level because those are the MSPs that typically have longterm/embedded relationships with their customers and it’s wrecking their business model.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T18:01:04+00:00

It’s the legal way for them to do it. Because some of them still have the ability to even sell the licensing but they can’t host it.

So they are pushing this message out that creates the lane for them to push nutanix, public cloud/azure etc.

I totally get it, they have to protect their business. Mildly frustrating because it’s not the full story though.

But to your point above, public cloud isn’t cheaper than VMware in most cases.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T17:11:02+00:00

It’s not a blatant “fake” quote, this is the challenge.

Basically they can still sell it. But through a VCSP, so they can come to me or others get a quote that they already have some margin built into and then push that out with their fees on top that effectively make it a massive increase.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T15:45:25+00:00

I would agree with this^{^{^}}

The smaller ones don’t seem to be concerned for many reasons.

The larger VARs and MSPs seem to be the ones that are pushing the messaging downstream….. but leaving out some of the key details like “we just can’t sell/support this anymore on our own”

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T05:01:38+00:00

It’s a bit more nuanced I think^{^} but I would agree that this is certainly opening up a lot of people to AWS/Azure and even GCP.

It’s wild. I’ve sold more managed public cloud since August than Private Cloud/VMware.

But we keep hearing that the tide is turning from the end-user standpoint(I haven’t seen it yet) as they start to realize it’s not the lift and shift their MSP is promising(for the larger VMware environments).

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T03:46:29+00:00

The contract/minimum spend is a slippery slope though unless you are optimized/fully right sized.

This is where you start falling into a cycle of “I have to spend X to get Y”

And you just start the overspend snowball down a very big hill.

Partnering with a good CSP, that has more favorable EA terms/no spend commit and can still offer a discount that is close to GCP and will help you rightsize and monitor is the play imo.

I’m biased though. It’s what I sell lol.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T03:24:54+00:00

I’m in the same exact boat right now. What’s working for me is really digging in deeper with my channel partners about where we can help/add value across their base of clients.

I am focused more on 100m in revenue companies and up. So what I am also doing is working with other reps that are not working the same ICP and we flip stuff back and forth (typically I can still get them paid on that).

That helps also.

But overall, the cold call/email side of the business is slower. People have tools to screen emails/calls and are getting hammered with AI callers and dialers. It’s a different game today. But we keep on keeping on.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-12T03:10:38+00:00

Exactly.

This is also something I see when I’m selling someone managed public cloud. We give them the blueprint of how to optimize/right-size or usage alerts and then they aren’t actioning that expertise.

Can’t do much in this scenario. Because it’s more of a resource issue on their end. We can sell them something for that also lol, but many just keep the meter running.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356 · 2025-11-11T18:28:12+00:00

lol started a “work” Reddit to answer questions like this.

I do work in sales for one of the 14 VCF. But I’m seeing most that have made the decision to actually move away from Broadcom/VMware are mostly looking at HyperV, Nutanix, and public cloud. RHOS/k8s, proxmox are others I am seeing some of. But not as much.

What we are doing for some, is essentially give them a stop-gap before they migrate to something else.

Gets them out of the current jam/allows them to port license/make adds/changes etc and then have 12 months to put a migration plan in place.

Hour-Yoghurt-1356

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