Vinay Sastry

About

Many founders pay the cloud and AI bill like a utility. It works more like capital: every dollar backs a product or a customer, whether anyone chose to or not.

I help founders make those choices on purpose. That means tracing spend back to the products and customers it supports, and making clear who owns each spending decision, so finance and engineering work from the same numbers. I'm not a cost-cutter. The goal is cloud and AI spend you can explain and plan around as you grow.

I've worked in technology for 25 years, including seven at AWS as a Principal Enterprise Advisor and Cloud Architect. I've also been a founder: I co-founded the ad-tech startup Edgevertise as CTO, so I know the cloud bill from the founder's side. I built a cloud advisory practice at Segura that was later acquired, and I hold an MBA from Melbourne Business School.

I now run Aureon Advisory, a boutique advisory specialising in FinOps and Cloud Financial Management. I'm most useful once cloud and AI are among your larger costs but a full-time FinOps hire doesn't make sense yet. I work alongside your CTO and finance lead, and leave the reporting in place for your team to run.

Big wins

• Tied ~$2.2m a year of AWS spend to products for a financial services business, so cloud cost now shapes pricing and margin
• Co-founded Brisbane ad-tech startup as CTO: cut infrastructure costs ~50% on AWS and helped raise a $300k seed round
• Brought cost governance and continuous improvement to 15+ enterprises at AWS, lowering cloud spend ~35%