A Studio Becomes a Funded Product Company
Novelingo, a Málaga-based EdTech startup, was building an AI-powered platform to transform corporate training, but they had no production infrastructure, no internal platform team, and a government grant deadline that would define the company's future. Threading Clouds delivered the complete AWS foundation, DevOps pipelines, AI infrastructure, and fractional CTO leadership that took Novelingo from prototype to funded product company — including the technical narrative that secured a €250,000 Neotec grant from CDTI.
About Novelingo
Novelingo is a Málaga-based EdTech startup specializing in serious games and gamified corporate training. Their platform, Novelingo Studio, uses AI to enable anyone to create training video games without coding. ENISA-certified startup (2024), Neotec grant recipient, and Google "Approved by Teachers" seal holder. Clients span corporate training, cultural heritage, tourism, and education.
What needed to change
A Product Company Without a Product Platform
Novelingo was transitioning from a services studio into a technology company. Novelingo Studio, their cloud-based SaaS for creating training video games without coding, existed only as a prototype. To serve enterprise clients and operate as a real SaaS business, they needed production-grade AWS infrastructure fast — without the runway to build an internal platform team.
€250,000 in Funding Hinged on a Credible Technical Plan
Novelingo had applied for a Neotec grant from CDTI worth €250,000. The evaluation committee required a detailed technical architecture and infrastructure roadmap. Without senior technical leadership to articulate that plan, the grant and the company's transformation were at risk.
The Core Differentiator Was Stuck in Prototype
Novelingo Studio's market position depends on AI-generated game creation that cuts development time from weeks to minutes. The team had no infrastructure expertise to provision, secure, and operate AI services at production scale. Without a reliable AI backend, the product could not ship.
Why Threading Clouds
Novelingo needed more than a cloud vendor; they needed a partner who could simultaneously stand up production infrastructure, build the AI backend that powers their core differentiator, and act as the senior technical voice in front of a government grant evaluation committee. Threading Clouds brought that combination in a single engagement: deep AWS expertise across multi-account foundations, ECS microservices, and Amazon Bedrock, paired with fractional CTO advisory that translated infrastructure decisions into the technical narrative funders and enterprise buyers needed to see. For a six-person startup, that integration replaced hiring four different specializations.
How we solved it
Threading Clouds delivered an integrated engagement across four service lines, structured in three infrastructure phases with fractional CTO advisory running continuously across all of them. Phase one provisioned a production-grade AWS multi-account architecture using AWS Organizations — separate accounts for production, staging, development, and shared services — with every resource defined in Terraform and Terragrunt for reproducibility and auditability. Phase two built automated CI/CD pipelines from commit to production and decomposed the application into independent microservices running on Amazon ECS with Fargate, enabling zero-downtime deployments and daily release cadence. Phase three enabled Amazon Bedrock across the platform, giving Novelingo Studio secure access to multiple foundation models for its AI game-generation engine without the overhead of GPU provisioning. Throughout the engagement, fractional CTO services produced the technical architecture and roadmap that anchored the Neotec grant submission and established the engineering practices — code review, branching strategy, release management — that a growing product team would need.
What changed
Novelingo entered the engagement as a services studio with a prototype. They exited as a funded technology company running a production-grade SaaS platform on AWS, with the technical credibility to win government grants and serve enterprise clients. The Neotec grant from CDTI was approved on the strength of the technical architecture and roadmap that Threading Clouds built — €250,000 in non-dilutive funding for a six-person startup, secured without giving up equity. The engagement compressed what would typically take 12 to 18 months of hiring and iteration into a single coordinated delivery.
Results and benefits
Technical Credibility That Secures Funding
The architecture documentation and roadmap delivered by Threading Clouds gave Novelingo a credible answer to the hardest question in any grant application: "Can you actually build this?" The €250,000 Neotec grant approval validated that the answer was yes.
Built for the Next Enterprise Client
Novelingo's infrastructure was designed for the procurement conversations they will have tomorrow, not just the product they ship today. Environment isolation, data handling, deployment controls, and audit trails are answered in the architecture — opening the enterprise market segment from day one.
No Re-Architecture at Scale
The multi-account structure, automated pipelines, and modular infrastructure grow with Novelingo. New services, new regions, and new compliance requirements slot in without redesigning what already works — serving a six-person team today and a sixty-person team tomorrow without a rebuild.
Continuing the partnership
With the cloud foundation, AI backend, and engineering practices in place, Novelingo is positioned to expand Novelingo Studio across new enterprise clients and training verticals. Threading Clouds continues to support the platform's evolution — adding services, regions, and compliance controls as the product matures and the customer base grows — while keeping fractional CTO advisory available for the technical decisions that come with scale.
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