Why Customize Chose Bootstrapping Over VC: A Different Path to Building Enterprise Software

Sometimes, the decision not to raise venture capital comes from understanding market cycles rather than a principled stance against VC funding. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Customize founder Stoyan Zulyamski shared how his study of macroeconomics led to an unconventional funding strategy for his cloud management platform.

“I didn’t want venture capital because I was studying at that point macroeconomics and I knew that there is a cycle coming of boom and bust,” Stoyan explained. “I was thinking, dawn, if you get money right now from the venture capital and the things are getting, let’s say, into the direction of bad direction, let’s say in 2023 and 2024, do you really want to get money from the VC’s?”

Instead of pursuing traditional venture funding, Stoyan approached a former colleague from his banking days who ran a profitable services company called Nevexis. “I spoke to a friend in Bulgaria, which I knew back in the days from the bank, and I said to him, hey, look, you have a services company from your profitable with. I have a very nice idea for a product and I will dedicate myself to this.”

This decision created unique pressures and opportunities. “It’s putting a lot of pressure on us because you need to balance two apples in the air, because from one side the services are now getting into a time of people. They just want better services at lower cost. And from another angle, you need to make customized profitable,” Stoyan shared.

The timing of their decision proved prescient. “If it was a 2022, everybody was talking about evaluation. Now it’s about profitability,” Stoyan noted. This shift in market sentiment validated their focus on sustainable growth over rapid scaling.

Their bootstrap approach has influenced their go-to-market strategy. Rather than pursuing aggressive expansion across cloud providers, they started focused on Google Cloud Platform before expanding. They’ve also leveraged cloud marketplaces to grow efficiently: “We’ve just got on the marketplace resource for Google, and I’m betting that we’re going to see probably ten x growth this year.”

The company has built strategic partnerships rather than relying on venture funding to fuel growth. “We’ve had, I don’t know, five or six serious partnerships with managed service providers and then a new big managed service provider is coming this year,” Stoyan shared.

Looking ahead, they recognize that bootstrapping may not fund their ambitions forever. “Probably at some point we will not be able to sustain this with our own efforts and I will need strategic capital when we scale,” Stoyan acknowledged. However, when they do raise capital, it will be from a position of strength rather than necessity.

For founders considering funding options, Customize’s experience offers valuable insights. Bootstrap funding doesn’t mean avoiding venture capital forever—it means choosing when and how to engage with investors based on market conditions and business needs.

The key insight? Funding strategy should align with market cycles and business model. As Stoyan’s experience shows, understanding macroeconomic trends can be as important as understanding your product market when deciding how to fund your company’s growth.

Their journey suggests that in enterprise software, where sales cycles are long and customer relationships are crucial, having the patience that comes with bootstrap funding can be an advantage rather than a limitation. Sometimes, the best way to build for the long term is to start by funding your own growth.