Practicing What I Preach, Just At Scale

Table Of Contents

Doubling Down On Community, Value, And Purpose My Mission At CloudZero Why Now? Why This Platform?

I’ve spent most of my career building and optimizing cloud, on-prem, and data platforms for growing companies. It’s been an amazing journey so far.

Through it all, FinOps has become more than just a methodology for me (Fred FinOps didn’t just come from my love of the Flintstones, though I do appreciate a good cartoon). It’s a community, a discipline, a tribe I’ve come to call home.

Lately, some tough questions have kept me up at night:

What is real value, and how do we measure it?
How do we best communicate and influence change across multiple personas?
When an AI experiment consumes the entire quarterly cloud budget in three days, what went wrong?
When engineering teams avoid innovation because they can’t predict infrastructure costs, how do we fix that?

These challenges got me thinking. How could I give more back to the FinOps community that’s given me so much?

The answer? Don’t step away from the work I love. Find new ways to invest, empower, and help others level up.

Doubling Down On Community, Value, And Purpose

True FinOps isn’t just about cost savings or dashboards. It’s a connection — between technology, innovation, and business value. It’s about helping engineers, architects, and leaders act with clarity and confidence. Today, managing cloud and AI spend is critical. Growth depends on it. And it’s essential because:

Visibility drives results. If you can’t see where cloud and AI dollars are flowing, you’re navigating in the dark. Guessing instead of governing. The first step to optimization is transparency. And sometimes — this requires shameback.

Optimization is a shared responsibility. It’s no longer just engineering’s job. Or just finance. Or product. Everyone has a stake.

Insight speeds you up. Real-time cost intelligence lets you move faster and scale smarter.

My Mission At CloudZero

I came to CloudZero because it’s a platform built for practitioners, by practitioners, and built by engineers, for engineers. My motivation is simple: scale my passion and serve the community in bigger, bolder ways. I want to:

Build the strongest FinOps practice — and share what works, what doesn’t, and why, openly.

Grow technically — partnering with engineers and architects to solve problems that matter, especially around cloud and AI cost management.

Be present in the community — through trainings, webinars, podcasts, and real conversations at events like KubeCon and re:Invent.

FinOps isn’t my side project anymore. It’s my primary focus. Joining CloudZero is a pivot, yes, but it’s one that lets me double down on my belief in the power of community, and invest in the people and practices that can move us all forward.

Why Now? Why This Platform?

CloudZero brings together technology and people in a way that truly empowers teams. It’s not just about surfacing spend. It’s context and insights that drive smarter decisions and making every dollar count. I’m proud to be a part of a team that cares as much as I do.

If you’re figuring out cloud and AI costs, passionate about FinOps or just want to swap stories — let’s talk. This is a new chapter. And I’d love for you to be part of it.

Author: Larry Advey

Larry Advey brings decades of hands-on FinOps experience to his role as Director, Cloud Platform & FinOps at CloudZero. As Fred FinOps, he's a champion for cost optimization best practices across the FinOps community. Now he's focused on building FinOps education and enablement at scale.