about
Cost simplified.
Relaxation justified.
Koali was built on a simple frustration: every company knows there's waste in their AWS bill, and almost none of them have the time to do anything about it. We do.
the story
Why Koali exists.
I've spent the last decade building infrastructure on AWS, and at every company I worked at, the same thing kept happening. Someone — usually me — would surface a list of cost-saving opportunities. Everyone would agree they were great ideas. Then the tickets would land in the backlog and quietly die there.
It wasn't that anyone disagreed with the work. It was that the engineers were heads-down shipping features, the managers were hitting roadmap deadlines, and the SRE team was on call. Nobody had a free week to go re-tune Savings Plans or chase down a $4,000/month NAT Gateway anomaly. So the savings sat there, month after month, while the bill kept growing.
I started Koali to fix that specific problem. Not to write another report. Not to sit on a recommendations panel. To actually do the work — audit the account, design the changes, and execute them inside a real change window — so the savings show up in the next bill instead of the next quarter's OKRs.
The pricing model came from the same place. If I genuinely believed I could save companies money, I shouldn't need a retainer to prove it. Shared savings, no upfront, no fee if we don't deliver. The math is honest, and the incentives only point in one direction.
— Derek Walker, Founder
background
A decade in the weeds of AWS.
Before Koali, I spent ten years as a DevOps engineer with a focus on AWS, automation, and CI/CD — with earlier stints in systems and network administration. That lineage matters: cost optimization done well isn't a finance exercise, it's an infrastructure one.
Companies I've built infrastructure for
Wendy's
Enterprise infrastructure at scale
Chocolatey Software
Package management platform on AWS
Omni Federal
DoD project — non-classified
What I've been doing the whole time
what i believe
Four things, non-negotiable.
01
Execution beats recommendation.
A spreadsheet of findings is the easy part. The hard part is shipping the changes. If I'm not willing to execute, I shouldn't be charging.
02
Incentives or nothing.
Retainers and hourly rates create hidden misalignments. Shared savings is the only model where I literally cannot win unless you do.
03
Read-only until it isn't.
I never get write access to a customer account until there's an approved plan. Trust isn't a vibe — it's an IAM policy.
04
No re-architecture sneak attacks.
The job is cost optimization, not a six-month migration disguised as one. If a change needs an engineering project to pull off, it's not in scope.
say hello
Derek Walker
Founder · AWS Solutions Architect
I'm the person who reads your audit, designs your plan, and ships your changes. There's no rotating bench of consultants, no offshore handoff, no junior associate doing the work behind the curtain. You email me, you get me.
If you're burning more on AWS than you should be — and most teams are — I'd love to take a look. The audit is free, and the only thing on the line is your bill.
let's work together
Cost simplified.
Relaxation justified.
It's not just a tagline — it's the entire point of this company. Let's find what's hiding in your bill.
$10k+ monthly AWS spend · No risk