7 Go-to-Market Lessons from Building a Cloud Cost Management Platform

Sometimes the best product insights come from experiencing a problem firsthand. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Customize founder Stoyan Zulyamski shared crucial go-to-market lessons learned while building a cloud cost management platform. Here are the key takeaways that can help B2B founders navigate their own GTM journeys:

1. Start with Deep Industry Knowledge Working at a bank managing a $40M IT budget gave Stoyan invaluable insights into enterprise pain points. “When I was working for the bank, were managing like 40 million in IT operations. And I constantly had to take care of not overspending,” he explained. This hands-on experience helped identify a gap that spreadsheets couldn’t fill, leading to Customize’s creation.
2. Avoid the Product-First Marketing Trap Technical founders often fall into the trap of believing superior technology alone will drive adoption. Stoyan admits, “My engineering background was thinking that having a great product will solve the marketing problem, which is totally wrong.” Instead, they learned to focus on educating customers about the broader strategic value of cloud cost management.
3. Evolve Your Positioning as Markets Mature Initial positioning around direct cost savings evolved into a more sophisticated narrative. “Telling them that organizing their processes leading to efficiency would be a better statement than just saying that one product will give you 30% savings,” Stoyan shared. This shift from tactical benefits to strategic value proved especially effective with enterprise customers.
4. Map Your GTM to Enterprise Buying Patterns Understanding where your customers spend money is crucial. Customize shifted to selling through cloud marketplaces because “customers are having commitments to these cloud providers, it’s easier for you to grow when you’re on the marketplace.” This alignment with enterprise purchasing habits accelerated growth.
5. Target Multiple Stakeholders Strategically Enterprise sales require engaging different personas. “First of all, the CTO and the vice president of engineering… because these people are analyzing how costumes will be plugged into their ecosystem and help them,” Stoyan explained. But they also target finance and procurement teams who control cloud spending and vendor relationships.
6. Start Focused, Then Expand Rather than trying to solve everything at once, Customize started with Google Cloud Platform before expanding to other providers. “I really got excited at that point because Google Cloud just started getting into the game and I was sure that they will do the cloud in a different manner,” Stoyan shared, explaining their initial focus.
7. Position for Future Market Evolution Looking ahead, Stoyan believes we’re entering an era of “exponential organizations” where interconnected systems are crucial. “Bear in mind that the hyper automation era which we are getting into, we require from every software to act as a digital agent worker, which executes different tasks and can be leveraged as part of other larger ecosystem.”

This evolution from tactical tool to strategic platform reflects a broader truth about enterprise software: the initial problem that gets you in the door isn’t always the one that helps you scale. Customize’s journey shows how deep customer understanding, combined with strategic positioning and channel alignment, can help B2B startups evolve from point solutions to enterprise platforms.

For founders building in the enterprise space, these lessons highlight the importance of balancing product excellence with strategic GTM execution. As Stoyan’s experience shows, success often comes not just from solving a problem well, but from positioning that solution within the broader context of enterprise digital transformation.

The technology landscape continues to evolve, particularly with the emergence of AI workloads in cloud environments. Companies that can adapt their GTM approach while maintaining focus on core customer problems will be best positioned to capture the opportunities ahead.