Conversation
Highlights

From Call Center Hub to R&D Powerhouse: How This Founder is Building the Operating System for Cloud Cost Management

The shift from building in-house tools to creating scalable enterprise software often starts with a simple realization: spreadsheets don’t cut it anymore. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Stoyan Zulyamski shared how his experience managing a $40 million IT budget at a major bank led him to build Customize, a platform that’s reimagining how enterprises handle cloud cost management.

Working at a private equity fund that was acquiring companies weekly, Stoyan noticed a critical pattern. “I was starting to figure out that actually after the migrations, companies are spending a lot of money, but all the efforts were manual,” he explained. This observation sparked a crucial insight: cloud environments needed something more sophisticated than manual tracking.

But rather than rushing to market with a broad solution, Customize took a focused approach. They started with Google Cloud Platform, betting on its unique position in the market. As Stoyan noted, “Google Cloud just started getting into the game and I was sure that they will do the cloud in a different manner simply because they were catching the wave later than the others.”

This strategic focus helped shape their initial go-to-market approach, but Stoyan admits he made early marketing mistakes. “My engineering background was thinking that having a great product will solve the marketing problem, which is totally wrong,” he shared. Instead of leading with product features, they learned to focus on educating customers about the importance of cloud cost management across different stages of cloud adoption.

Their messaging evolution reflects this learning. Initially positioning themselves around direct cost savings, they shifted to 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 explained. This shift from tactical benefits to strategic value has proven particularly effective with enterprise customers.

The company’s go-to-market strategy has also evolved to leverage cloud marketplaces, recognizing that enterprises often have existing cloud provider commitments. “Before were offering ourselves outside, but because customers are having commitments to these cloud providers, it’s easier for you to grow when you’re on the marketplace,” Stoyan shared.

Their sales motion targets multiple stakeholders within organizations, each with distinct concerns. “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 engage with finance and procurement teams who are focused on cloud provider commitments and measuring cloud efficiency.

Perhaps most interestingly, Customize has positioned itself as an operating system for cloud optimization rather than just a cost management tool. This positioning reflects their vision of becoming a central system that integrates with and optimizes various cloud workloads, including emerging AI models.

Looking ahead, Stoyan believes we’re entering an era of “exponential organizations,” referencing Peter Diamandis’s concept. He advises founders to build for interconnectivity: “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 philosophy of building interconnected systems that can scale efficiently aligns well with current market demands for profitability and operational efficiency. As cloud environments become more complex with the addition of AI workloads, the need for sophisticated cost management and optimization tools will only grow, suggesting that Customize’s focused approach to solving this specific challenge could position them well for the future of cloud computing.