AWS Jumpstart Program

What is the Jumpstart Program?

 The AWS Jumpstart Program is designed to support startups that have an identified need for strategic services with the end goal of helping startups that already see the value in adopting specific AWS services but have limited technical knowledge or resources.  In the AWS Jumpstart program, participants are entitled to partial reimbursement for any consulting services utilized during the startup phase, with payouts scheduled upon project completion. Moreover, based on the project’s Statement of Work and Monthly Recurring Revenue, AWS will contribute half of the project’s construction funding. All funding transactions are processed in USD and are typically completed within 3-5 business days. To secure funding approval, customers must furnish a qualified opportunity with an AWS opportunity stage at or above 60%, a valid AWS account ID for existing customers, estimated AWS usage calculated using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator or Excel calculator for new services, a completed SOW outlining the project scope, defined milestones, and deliverables, as well as an AWS Solution Architect review of the proposed architecture and technical project deliverables. Services that allow reimbursement are as follows:

Analytics

• • All Analytics services like AWS Data Exchange
  • Amazon Redshift
  • AWS Data Pipeline
  • Amazon Elastic MapReduce
  • Amazon CloudSearch
  • Amazon Elasticsearch Service
  • Amazon Kinesis Firehose
  • Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics
  • Amazon QuickSight
  • Amazon Athena
  • AWS Glue
  • Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
•  For more details on AWS Analytics, check out our article here.

Internet of Things

• • All IoT services like AWS IoT SiteWise
  • AWS IoT Events
  • AWS IoT Things Graph
  • AWS IoT
  • AWS IoT Analytics
  • AWS Greengrass
  • AWS IoT Device Management
  • AWS IoT 1 click
  • AWS IoT Device Defender

Machine Learning

• • All Machine Learning services like Amazon Kendra
  • AWS DeepRacer
  • Amazon Augmented AI
  • Amazon Elastic Inference
  • Amazon SageMaker
  • Amazon Comprehend
  • Amazon Translate
  • Amazon Transcribe
  • Amazon Personalize
  • Amazon Forecast
  • Amazon Comprehend Medical
  • Amazon Textract
  • Amazon Sagemaker

Containers

• • Amazon ECS
  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service family (EKS, EKS Anywhere, EKS Distro)
  • Fargate

Non-relational Databases

• • All Non-Relational Databases like Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon DocumentDB, Amazon ElasticSearch Service, Amazon Keyspaces

Program Eligibility

 Funding is available within the regions of North America, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asian Pacific, and Japan.  By default, the AWS Jumpstart Program is open to AWS Partners who specialize in working with startups and have achieved AWS Competencies, including Containers, Data and Analytics, IoT, Machine Learning and/or AWS Service Delivery Designations, Database, Compute, Serverless Computing, Analytics and IoT in the AWS Consulting Partner track for Jumpstart.  The requirements described are still beholden to AWS’ evaluation and approval.  Additionally, there are some other qualifying factors as follows:

AWS Partner Oriented

The Jumpstart opportunity must be submitted in APN Partner Central and validated by AWS through the APN Customer Engagement (ACE) Program.

AWS Partner Supported

The Jumpstart opportunity must be identified and originated by AWS and supported by an AWS Partner.  For more on the AWS Partner Program, we have a detailed article to check out.

Statement of Work Requirements

AWS determines whether to contribute or not based on the ratio of the cost of a project as outlined in the statement of work between an AWS Partner and startup customer (SOW), divided by the customer’s projected monthly recurring revenue MRR.  Funding will be made available to the customer if the ratio is equal to or less than 7.

Jumpstart Opportunities

All opportunities must be for the benefit of the startup and must be approved by AWS prior to when work begins.  Further requests for opportunities will be reviewed first before being accepted or denied.

Review

Once the partner has completed the project, there must be a submission of successful execution, a list of deliverables, and a sign-off from the partner to AWS for complete evaluation within 30 days.  Afterward, the partner will receive cash reimbursement.

Program Eligibility

APN Customer Engagement (ACE) is the main outlet for customers to approach with proposals and will continue to be a middleman between AWS and the customer.  Getting started is simple:

1. Login at the APN portal. 
2. Navigate to “My Customers”
3. Select “Add” to make a new opportunity
4. Fill out all the required fields and submit

After that, there will be some discussion surrounding the customer’s key decision makers around viability, project requirements, expected outcomes around adoption of strategic services and payment terms. These are terms and conditions that must be independently set, negotiated, and agreed upon between the AWS partner and the startup customer and that the opportunity is viable, of interest, and may help solve for key business and technical needs. In order to validate project completion and issue payment, the AWS Partner needs to submit the milestones, timelines, service adoption and timeframes for AWS to start seeing the revenue. Finally, the AWS Program Manager will review each funding request and approve/reject based on whether it meets applicable requirements.

Funding Requirements

All funding is conducted in USD and will be conducted within the confines of 3-5 business days.  However, to be approved for funding, customers must provide the following:

• Qualified opportunity with AWS opportunity stage at or above 60% 
• Valid AWS account ID for existing customers 
• Estimated AWS usage identified with AWS Simple Monthly Calculator or Excel calculator for newer AWS Services not in the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator
• Completed SOW; must include a clear project scope, defined milestones, and deliverables 
• AWS Solution Architect review of the proposed architecture and technical project deliverables (NOTE: this will be facilitated by the AWS Partner Sales Managers)