From 8 to 45 Employees in 14 Months Without Onboarding Chaos
How a Y Combinator startup maintained culture, security, and consistency while scaling their remote-first team across 4 continents.
CloudFlow
Y Combinator W23 • Cloud Infrastructure Platform
New hires onboarded
in 14 months
Saved per hire
(CTO time back)
Continents covered
with one system
IP agreements signed
before code access
About the Company
CloudFlow: Infrastructure as Code for Modern Teams
CloudFlow is a Y Combinator-backed (W23) infrastructure automation platform that helps engineering teams deploy and manage cloud resources without DevOps expertise. Think of it as "Stripe for infrastructure"—developers can spin up production-ready environments with a few lines of code.
Founded by Alex Chen (ex-Google) and Maya Patel (ex-AWS), CloudFlow raised a $3.2M seed round and experienced explosive growth. Post-launch traction led to rapid hiring: from 8 employees to 45 in just 14 months, spanning San Francisco, Austin, Berlin, and Lisbon.
Key Stats:
- • $3.2M seed funding (Y Combinator W23)
- • 463% team growth in 14 months
- • 100% remote-first from day one
- • Team across 4 continents, 8 timezones
THE CHALLENGE
Scaling Broke Their Onboarding Process
"Onboarding our first 8 people was easy—Slack messages, Google Docs, personal check-ins. But when we started hiring 3-4 people per month across different timezones, the system completely broke down. Engineers in Berlin were getting different information than folks in Austin. We forgot to get IP assignment agreements signed. People waited days for tool access. I was spending 15 hours per hire on admin instead of building product. It was unsustainable."
— Alex Chen, Co-Founder & CTO
❌ Before NewHirely
- • Google Doc checklist (constantly outdated)
- • Inconsistent experiences across timezones
- • Forgotten IP assignment agreements
- • Manual tool provisioning (3-5 day delays)
- • No security training before AWS access
- • CTO spending 15+ hours per hire
- • Remote hires feeling lost and disconnected
- • Multiple people asking "what's next?"
✅ After NewHirely
- • Automated workflow, always current
- • Identical experience regardless of location
- • 100% IP agreement completion rate
- • Tool access tracked and provisioned
- • Security training before any access
- • CTO spends 3 hours per hire (80% reduction)
- • "Best onboarding I've ever had" feedback
- • Self-service progress tracking
THE SOLUTION
Remote-First Onboarding That Scales
CloudFlow implemented NewHirely with a customized onboarding flow optimized for remote engineering teams:
Before any code or AWS access, new hires sign IP assignment, confidentiality, and non-compete agreements via DocuSign. Legal protection locked in before day one.
Custom video modules covering security best practices, 2FA requirements, credential management, and AWS security fundamentals. Completion required before tool provisioning.
Founders recorded welcome videos explaining CloudFlow's mission, values, and how they work. Remote hires feel connected to the team before their first Zoom call.
Automated checklist tracks access provisioning for Slack, GitHub, AWS, Notion, Figma, and Linear. Admins check off items as they grant access, eliminating forgotten tools.
THE RESULTS
Scaling Success Across 4 Continents
444hrs
CTO Time Recovered
37 hires × 12 hours saved = 444 hours back for Alex to focus on product, architecture, and fundraising instead of onboarding admin.
100%
Consistency Across Locations
Whether in SF, Austin, Berlin, or Lisbon, every team member gets the identical onboarding experience. Zero timezone or location bias.
2 days
Time to Productivity
New engineers complete onboarding and have full tool access within 48 hours. Previously took 7-10 days with manual provisioning.
4.9/5
Onboarding NPS Score
New hires consistently rate CloudFlow's onboarding as "the best I've ever experienced"—even compared to BigTech companies.
"NewHirely was one of the best investments we made. For $49/month, we got enterprise-level onboarding that scaled with us from 8 to 45 people. People join CloudFlow from FAANG companies and tell us our onboarding is better. That's the kind of first impression that builds great culture, even when you're remote."
— Alex Chen, Co-Founder & CTO
CloudFlow (Y Combinator W23)
