> Almost all enterprises have pre-committed budgets for cloud which means unless your product is FOSS it's going to be hard to convince someone to bet their business on it.
This isn't a death knell.
1. If you get into the marketplace, enterprises can spend their commit against you.
2. A few million in ARR is ~nothing to a hyperscale cloud, but meaningful to most startups. If you find the right positioning, you can get their sales team selling your solution on many deals.
Hyperscale cloud has stringent security and compliance requirements, and within hyperscale cloud, it's institutionally difficult to lobby for spending on a startup. I spent about six years in hyperscale cloud and never saw a case where we spent a few million on a startup.
You seem to have misunderstood, I'm not referring to the hyperscaler spending money themselves.
If you don't think any ISVs are making millions through the marketplace you're simply mistaken. I worked at Google Cloud and personally know at least one startup that made the majority of their revenue through cloud partnerships.
Author here. Yes, that said getting into the ISV / APN partner program can be a major pain in the butt and take quite long (from a startup’s perspective where time is precious)
This isn't a death knell.
1. If you get into the marketplace, enterprises can spend their commit against you.
2. A few million in ARR is ~nothing to a hyperscale cloud, but meaningful to most startups. If you find the right positioning, you can get their sales team selling your solution on many deals.