We build yours like it’s ours.
Cloudburst is a product studio run by entrepreneurs. We’ve launched ten software products of our own, and everything we learn running them goes into the software we build and run for you.
Talk to ZackTen software products of our own, launched.
We fund them, run them, and live with every decision. Whatever we bring to your software, we tried on ours first. A few of them:
We keep changing how we build. You get the benefit.
2018
A startup studio
We started by launching ventures with entrepreneurs, ours and theirs, and learned what it takes to get a product off the ground.
2020
Building with non-technical founders
We got good at turning what an owner knows into software, without asking them to become technical.
2023
Invested alongside clients
Shared Success Agreements let us share in the upside once the work proved itself. More than 50 so far.
Today
Agentic development
Our engineers work alongside AI agents and Cloudia, our AI teammate. Building is faster and costs less, and a person still makes every call that matters.
What that means for you
Tested on our products first.
Every process, tool, and safeguard runs on Localyst, winwinGO, and Wrappt before it touches yours.
Faster and more affordable.
AI tools take the repetitive work, so your budget goes to judgment and to keeping the software healthy.
Judgment from people who’ve been owners.
Engineers review everything before it goes live, and the people deciding what to build have made payroll themselves.
Who you’ll work with.
Custom software is becoming what the website was twenty years ago. We want every owner who’s built something real to be able to have it, understand it, and keep it growing, not only the companies with the biggest budgets.
We believe in entrepreneurs, in technology as the lever that lets them scale, and in business as a force for good. Cloudburst was founded to widen who gets to build, and that’s still the work.
Cloudburst is a Minneapolis product studio, run by friends who’ve known each other since second grade. Through Monkey Island Ventures we still start and back companies of our own, and through Builderhood, an online community, we spend time with people building software for their own businesses.
Zack Steven
Founder & CEO
Zack designs systems and communities where people can thrive. He grew up in an entrepreneurial family, started out as a social entrepreneur, and has spent 20+ years building companies, including Localyst, winwinGO and Wrappt. He has worked directly with more than 100 clients.
He created the Shared Success Agreement and has structured more than 50 of them. He hosts No-Code Coffee for non-technical entrepreneurs, studied art at Grinnell College, and cares about good design, big ideas, and strong communities.
Cloudia
AI teammate
Cloudia runs your live workspace. It answers questions about your code and data, turns requests into tickets, and builds the ticket-sized changes. A Cloudburst engineer reviews everything before it goes live.
Zack StevenFounder & CEO, Cloudburst StudioI started my first software company the way most entrepreneurs do: with an idea I couldn’t let go of and no way to build it myself.
I’m not a developer. I hired people to build my vision, spent my own money, and learned the expensive lessons: builds that took twice as long as promised, quotes I couldn’t make sense of, momentum stalling while I waited on someone else. What I wanted, and couldn’t find, was someone who understood the business first and could tell me, plainly, what was worth building and what wasn’t.
Some of what I built failed. Some of it worked. All of it taught me the same thing: the right technology partner at the right moment changes what a business can become. Most entrepreneurs never get a fair shot at finding out.
Cloudburst is the partner I needed back then and couldn’t find.
I run it with friends I’ve known since second grade. We’ve started companies together, taken the risks with our own money, and we build for you the way we build for ourselves.
And if we don’t think a build will move your needle, we’ll tell you — before you spend a dollar, not after.
A cloudburst is what happens when a cloud can’t hold any more. Everything it’s been carrying comes down at once. That’s the moment we built this studio for: when the expertise, the customers, and the idea you’ve been carrying are ready to become something real.
Tell us what you see and where you’re stuck.