In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast, we sat down with Mike Weider, Co-Founder and CEO of Frugal, the world's first AI-native application cost engineering platform. Frugal empowers developers to reduce application costs by automatically fixing inefficient code patterns that run up cloud spend, bridging the friction between finance and engineering teams while helping deliver more agile products.
We first connected with Mike at SaaS North in Ottawa (where Boast had just celebrated the launch of Budget 2025 and enhanced SR&ED funding). Mike pitched Frugal at the TechTO Rocket Stage, and his perspective immediately stood out: this wasn't just another dev tool; it was a solution to a problem that's gone from painful to unsustainable.
Mike brings serious credentials to this mission. He's served as Founder and CEO at three previous venture-backed startups that all went on to major acquisitions. He's an independent board member at numerous businesses and nonprofits (including Invest Ottawa), and an active seed investor. His pattern-recognition across multiple successful exits gives him a unique lens on what problems are worth solving.
Born and Bred in Startups
Mike graduated with an engineering degree and got a job with a startup in Ottawa as one of the first half-dozen employees. "I was part of seeing how a company is built from scratch, and through that kind of demystified the process a little bit," he explains.
That demystification gave him the confidence to launch his first business at 26. "At the time, I didn't know what I didn't know, but it was helpful to be part of another startup to begin with, to sort of open your eyes to what's possible."
Since then, Mike has built his entire career in the startup ecosystem—most recently co-founding Frugal with Craig, a colleague he's worked with at two previous startups.
The Problem: Cloud Costs Gone Bananas
Anyone building software today knows about cloud costs. Most companies spend roughly 10% of revenue paying Amazon or Google bills for hosting their applications.
That was already painful. But with AI, it's becoming unsustainable.
"Now with AI coming on, that's another cost adding to the pile, making something that was painful in some cases now unsustainable," Mike explains.
The genesis of Frugal came from a conversation between Mike and Craig, who was managing a $30 million cloud bill at a larger company. They were lamenting how difficult it was to get engineers to focus on costs.
Why don't engineers focus on cost?
It's not that they don't care. The problem is structural:
"When you're writing code as a developer, you actually don't know what things are gonna cost immediately. It's only later when it gets into production and gets some usage that those costs become apparent. But by that time, no one ever gets the time to go back and fix things. You're too busy shipping the next feature for customers."
Every once in a while there's a recession or cost crunch, companies focus on optimization for a month, then stop and move on. The cycle repeats.
The Akamai Lesson: What Good Discipline Looks Like
At Mike's previous company (acquired by Akamai), he saw something different. Akamai was "really focused on margins and costs. It was the first company we'd seen that had good discipline around this issue."
Every new application at Akamai had a cost review and was thoroughly analyzed before deployment.
Mike and Craig asked: "Wouldn't it be great if every application and every engineer had a cost review as part of the new code they're developing?"
That became Frugal's mission: Create an AI cost engineer that serves as a co-pilot to developers.
The vision:
- Review new code and explain cost implications
- Make recommendations for more efficient approaches
- Analyze current spend and identify optimization opportunities
- Catch cost issues before they hit production
Shifting Left: The Developer Tools Pattern
Mike and Craig have a proven playbook. Their previous companies followed a consistent pattern:
Watchfire: Finding security vulnerabilities in software, helping developers fix them Blaze: Finding performance issues, helping developers fix them
Frugal: Finding cost issues, helping developers fix them
The common thread? Developer tools that examine applications for deficiencies and build solutions—but more importantly, shift problems left.
"If you take security, for example, it used to be that developers would write code, throw it over the fence to security folks who'd say 'Nope, you made errors, go fix those.' Or worse, they'd find it in production. But then we got smarter and started building security into how we write software. Now most software teams have code review tools looking for vulnerabilities as they write."
The same shift needs to happen with cost.
Today, cost issues are found way downstream in a reactive way. Frugal pushes the issue upstream—catching it proactively, earlier in the process.
"It's way easier to find it while I'm creating something than to wait and let it manifest into a bigger issue. It's way more expensive to solve the problem later."
This isn't just a technical challenge—it's cultural and requires thought leadership. "We need to help establish cost reviews as a new norm. Today nobody really looks at cost as they write code, but I'm very confident that in the future everybody will be doing cost reviews as part of how they write code."
AI Makes the Problem Worse (and Better)
AI is fundamentally changing software development, and Frugal sits right at the intersection of opportunity and crisis.
The productivity boom: One of Frugal's developers told Mike: "I've written more code in the last six months at Frugal than I did in six years at my last job."
AI is turbocharging developers' ability to write code. But there's a catch.
The quality problem: "You're generating a larger volume of code, and as we all know, AI can also generate bad code. You need senior engineers to understand what's good and what's bad. But you're also going to need other controls on how we create software to examine it for quality issues, for security issues, for cost issues."
The new cost crisis: "AI itself is becoming a new cost. AI-native companies like Frugal, who started after November 2022 (the GPT moment)—our AI costs are actually bigger than our traditional cloud costs."
Mike predicts many companies will soon be in this boat. "The cost of AI, once it's embedded and running within a core part of your application—people who are AI-native are seeing these costs go bananas. That's putting further pressure on what was a painful issue into an unsustainable issue. It's forcing a change in how we do things."
The Ottawa Ecosystem Advantage
Frugal is based in Ottawa, and Mike emphasizes the strength of that ecosystem. "There's a very rich and robust community for startups in Ottawa. Everybody knows about Shopify, but there's a bunch of others."
Mike serves on the board of Invest Ottawa, the local economic development agency helping foster innovation and tech startups—taking companies from idea stage to scale-up with financing, hiring, business advice, and more.
The beta customer strategy:
Building Frugal required real-world data. "You can't just look at open source for cost issues. You need a live running application with real cost."
Mike and Craig leveraged their networks: "We've had over 50 calls with heads of engineering, heads of finance—folks we've pulled from our past networks to validate our direction and become beta customers and testers."
His advice: "Get out of the lab. Get out of your office. Talk to as many people as you can and make sure you're heading in the right direction."
This community-first approach aligns with Boast's philosophy. We regularly work with organizations like the Canadian Council of Innovators (CCI) to gut-check our feedback to government on SR&ED program changes—tapping into ecosystem partners who help validate direction and connect us with founders who'll benefit from our solutions.
What's Next: Launching in Q1 2026
Frugal has been building for the last year, working with beta customers to refine the platform. The first real release ships at the end of Q1 2026.
"We're moving from beta to really building out go-to-market and launching the company," Mike explains.
The team advantage? Mike and Craig have assembled engineers they've worked with across previous companies. "That's the benefit of having done this three times before—you know where all the great engineers are."
Now they're doing the same thing with go-to-market: building a world-class sales and marketing organization to get the word out.
The Parallel to R&D Tax Credits
Throughout our conversation, Mike and I kept finding parallels between Frugal's mission and Boast's approach to R&D tax credits.
Both solutions help teams focus on innovation without overextending resources:
- Frugal automates cost engineering so developers can focus on building great products
- Boast automates R&D tax credit claims so engineers can focus on innovation instead of documentation
Both provide validation:
- Frugal's cost reviews prove code efficiency
- SR&ED credits prove genuine innovation and make companies more attractive to investors
Both bridge finance and engineering:
- Frugal eliminates friction between teams by making cost visible to developers
- Boast helps CFOs access non-dilutive funding that extends runway without diluting equity
Both recognize that manual processes don't scale:
- You can't expect engineers to manually track cloud costs across every service
- You can't expect engineers to manually document every R&D activity for tax purposes
The automation layer matters—but so does the expertise layer. Frugal combines AI cost analysis with recommendations from people who understand software architecture. Boast combines AI-powered data collection with R&D tax experts who optimize claims and handle government compliance.
Key Takeaways
Cloud costs have gone from painful to unsustainable – 10% of revenue going to cloud bills was already significant. AI costs on top are making the problem critical for AI-native companies.
Cost engineering needs to shift left – Just like security and performance, cost optimization needs to happen during development, not after deployment. It's far more expensive to fix later.
AI turbocharges productivity and problems – Developers are writing dramatically more code, but AI can also generate inefficient code. You need controls for quality, security, and cost.
Community and beta customers matter – Leverage your network for validation, feedback, and real-world testing. Get out of the office and talk to as many people as possible.
Proven playbooks compound – Mike and Craig's pattern of building developer tools that examine applications and shift problems upstream has worked three times. They're applying it to cost engineering with Frugal.
The future is predictable – In the future, everyone will do cost reviews as part of writing code. Frugal's mission is accelerating that inevitable shift.
Want to hear more about Mike's journey through multiple successful exits, why AI-native companies are seeing cloud costs "go bananas," and what Frugal's launch in Q1 2026 means for developers everywhere?
