No Cap Podcast Ep 3 Trailer | Surviving the Downturn: The @MilkStrawAI Cutting Cloud Costs by 50%
Welcome to No Cap Podcast - where we unpack the stories behind founders building through uncertainty, disruption, and rapid technological change.
βοΈ Dubaiβs @VentureSouq led a $2M seed round for @MilkStrawAI. The San Francisco startup uses AI to help companies manage and optimize their cloud platforms. https://t.co/XmAY8YhVjd
We just raised our seed round π₯
I met @jawad_shreim & @anas_y_abdallah working on a small project and we clicked instantly. Months later we went our separate ways, but we all knew we had to build something together.
Late 2023, we came back together and started @MilkStrawAI: optimize your AWS cloud in 10 minutes, save up to 50%.
My AI background helped us build the recommender engine that powers our optimization. But I also taught myself Ruby on Rails and shipped our first version with the team in early 2024.
As CPO, I became the glue. Translating between our business vision and technical execution, making sure we build what actually matters.
We raised $600k pre-seed in 2024 to scale. And as we worked with more clients, we learned something: cloud isn't just expensive, it's hard to see. So we built observability into MilkStraw. Clients now manage all regions and resources from one tab. See more, save more.
Optimization is polished. Now we're expanding.
We also brought on incredible talent to help us get there:
β @alihfadel, Founding Engineer
β @zboon101, AI Engineer
β @abderizik, Design Engineer
β @Gyamm994, Founder Associate
With this round, we're making MilkStraw the place you go to manage your cloud.
Grateful to our investors, our customers, and to this team for believing in what we're building.
Let's milk the cloud βοΈπ₯
The quality of PR titles at @MilkStrawAI π
"Remove previous bugs and add new ones"
Big changes coming up π₯
Shoutout to @abderizik & @alihfadel for keeping things fun π
βοΈ Automating changelog drafts v2
Iβve continued working on automating our monthly changelog drafts at @MilkStrawAI
Last month I started with a simple idea: grab commit messages with git log and feed them into an LLM
It worked, but I quickly realized that commit messages alone are too short and very technical. They don't usually capture the real context behind a change, which makes it harder for the LLM to write a meaningful changelog
So I added a second source: PR descriptions
PRs usually tell a clearer story of what changed and why. And since BugBot in @cursor_ai adds its own PR summary for every pull request, we suddenly had a lot more context to work with without any extra effort!
To grab these PR descriptions, Iβm just using a simple gh client command. Combined with the commit messages, the LLM now produces changelog drafts that are much clearer, more complete, and closer to how I would write them myself
Small upgrade, big difference every month
Small upgrade, saving hours of manually reviewing changes to write the changelog every month
I often tweak local config files like ππππππ/ππππππππππππ/πππππππππππ.ππ or other files, but I never want to commit those changes
Still, every time I run git status, they keep showing up and it drives me crazy!
I just found a simple trick to stop that:
πππβππππππβπππππ‘βββππππβπ πππππππβ<ππππ_ππππ>
Now Git completely ignores my local edits
And if I ever need Git to track the file again:
πππβππππππβπππππ‘βββππβππππβπ πππππππβ<ππππ_ππππ>
Such a small thing, but it made my workflow so much cleaner
At @MilkStrawAI, we use Slack to deliver critical platform alerts.
When important jobs fail, we send messages to a Slack channel so the team can act fast, rather than hunting through endless dashboards and logs.
MilkStraw AI is thrilled to announce the opening of our cafe.
After months of research into developer wellness, we realized that most of our customers were fueled by caffeine, confusion, and spreadsheets showing their AWS bills. So we fixed one of those things.
Introducing the MilkStraw Cafe.
The Outage - $10
Orange juice that knocks you out for 15 hours. Comes with a sick leave note.
Reserved Instance - $40
Buy it now, use it later. No refunds.
The simple @MilkStrawAI stack before I join:
- 1 @FastAPI microservice
- 1 @rails web app
The simpleR stack after I joined:
- 1 @rails web app
Today, we migrated our Python microservice to Ruby with huge gains in DX, cost, and performance π
We first built @MilkStrawAI's savings tool as a copilot, giving smart recommendations to add/remove Savings Plans
Clients hated it π
Too much maintenance
So we went autopilot instead
Now they just onboard, enable savings (EC2, RDS, etc.), and thatβs it
The system handles everything in the background.
Zero maintenance.
Zero hassle.
50% savings.
Now the same people who disliked the copilot loved the autopilot π
Sometimes users want a copilot.
Other times, they need an autopilot.
Design by @jawad_shreim