Instead of scaling a costly direct sales team, SpeedSize focused early on partnerships with major cloud providers. Their strategy targets platforms like AWS that lack a built-in image and video compression solution, positioning SpeedSize as the essential add-on, despite a multi-year setup time.
The company scaled from near-zero to $6M ARR in under three years by consistently doubling revenue. This rapid growth was maintained even as the Ukrainian co-founder's R&D team operated in a warzone and the Israeli co-founder's team faced conflict and military drafts.
When SpeedSize had less than two months of runway, the co-founders immediately stopped their own salaries. This created a personal sense of urgency, forcing them to solve the cash problem before it impacted the entire team, whose salaries were still months from being at risk.
During its growth phase, SpeedSize made the counterintuitive decision to reduce its headcount by 50%. This pivot created a leaner, more efficient organization where the engineering team grew from less than 50% to 70% of the company, now supporting $6M in ARR.
Despite a capital-efficient 1.2x ARR-to-funding ratio, the founder regrets the "VC fever" of forced spending. He found VCs were unhelpful during the wars affecting his teams, leading the profitable company to reject a traditional Series A path and retain over 70% equity.