Horizon Ascent · An AWS programme from First Horizon

Your startup
&
First Horizon

Getting onto AWS is the easy part. We build the two things that decide whether you scale: infrastructure a bank's security team will sign off, and numbers your board can defend when the credits run out.

Apply to the programme See the three stages
8–12 weeks, then a standing relationship Four hours of advisory at no cost Ten AWS funding routes navigated

The premise

You bring the product. We bring everything that gets it bought.

Most cloud partners stop at the architecture. The reason a good Cape Town company stalls is rarely the architecture — it is a failed vendor security review, a bill nobody modelled, and no route to a corporate buyer.

You bring

  • A product in market, or an MVP that is close
  • At least one technical founder or engineer
  • Something running on AWS, or ready to move
  • Time for the sessions — roughly a day a fortnight

Your code, your data, your intellectual property. We work under a mutual non-disclosure agreement and rarely need production access at all.

We bring

  • A 24/7 cyber security operations centre, already running
  • Cost discipline built to unit economics, not dashboards
  • Ten AWS funding routes, and the applications to match
  • Enterprise buyers, through the First Technology Group
  • Nine offices when you enter your next market

First Horizon is an AWS Advanced Services Partner and part of one of South Africa's largest systems integrators.

The shape of it

Three stages. Every one of them is an ampersand.

Eight to twelve weeks of structured work, then we keep going. An accelerator graduates you; your infrastructure does not graduate.

Never a phase

Security & FinOps run for as long as you do

Everyone lists these as bullets inside a stage. They are not stage work. They are the two disciplines that decide whether the company survives its own growth.

Security that survives a vendor review

Guardrails on day one, then round-the-clock monitoring from BUI's Cyber Security Operations Centre, run out of ISO 27001 and ISO 22301 certified operations.

  • Identity, workload, data protection and incident response coverage
  • An evidence pack your customer's security team will actually accept
  • The thing blocking your enterprise deal is the questionnaire, not the bill

FinOps that answers to your board

Not a dashboard. A forecast to the day your credits expire and a commitment strategy, revisited every quarter as you grow.

  • Cost per customer, per transaction, per inference — what investors ask for
  • Tagging and allocation set up before it is expensive to fix
  • Savings Plan and Reserved Instance strategy sized to real runway

When you expand

"Scale internationally" is usually a bullet. Here it is a list of addresses.

Cape Town & Johannesburg & Durban & Nairobi & London & Dublin & Irvine & Toronto & Perth

In-region support hours in the market you are entering Guidance on data residency and local obligations A local commercial entity to contract through

What costs you nothing

  • Four hours of advisory — two at the start to get the architecture right, two at week ten to review progress and coach the team
  • Funding eligibility mapping and application support
  • Pre-sales architecture, solution design and a costed AWS estimate
  • A landing zone blueprint and your opening cost baseline
  • A standing quarterly clinic once the programme ends

Who this is for & who it is not

  • You have a product in market or an MVP within reach
  • You are building on AWS, or moving to it
  • You sell to businesses, and procurement is slowing you down
  • You have raised, or you are about to
  • Not for you if you want credits and nothing else — that is a form, not a programme, and you do not need us for it

Apply

Your startup & First Horizon

Tell us where you are. We read every one, and we will say no clearly if it is not a fit rather than waste your quarter.

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