For its business, the U.S. is the best place to be, said Khash Sajadi, CEO and co-founder of Cloud 66.
Cloud 66 is one of 11 companies in the latest Techstars program in Austin. All of the companies will pitch their companies Wednesday afternoon during Techstars Demo Day at the Austin Music Hall. This year, several of the startups plan to stay in Austin after the program ends Wednesday.
They’ve got financial incentives to stay too.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what the Techstars Austin class has accomplished this summer and Rony Kahan and I have committed a total of $20,000 investment for each of them that decides to stay in Austin,” Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, wrote in his weekly Austin Startup Digest.
“When it comes to cloud computing, Austin is particularly important,” he said. “There are a lot of enterprises and cloud infrastructure players around here like Rackspace in San Antonio and Dell in Austin.”
Cloud 66 has seven employees and four moved to Austin.
The company, founded in 2013, helps software developers build and manage the software that powers their business. It provides IT services as a service.
“This is the engine that powers the business,” said Sajadi.
The company provides technology infrastructure for small to medium-sized software as a service companies. Cloud 66 serves 5,000 software developers in 700 companies globally. Its customers include the BBC, CareerBuilder.com, Adobe, Bugheard and Web Summit. Its competitors include Heroku, a cloud application platform.
The company has raised $730,000 including a $120,000 investment from the Techstars program.
One of the biggest benefits of participating in Techstars Austin program is being able to work with Jason Seats, the program’s managing director, because Seats comes from a cloud background, Sajadi said. Seats, co-founded Slicehost, which he later sold to Rackspace and then headed up its cloud computing operations. Seats is an investor in Cloud 66.