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How SpeedSize Grew From $400K to $6M ARR on $5M Raised With 25 People

SpeedSize co-founder Vlad Malanin explains its AWS-led partnership strategy, annual contract pricing, and how the founders survived a 2023 cash crunch.

Vlad Malanin · SpeedSize

Published December 17, 2025
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What you’ll learn

Vlad Malanin, co-founder and CTO of SpeedSize, explains how his AI media compression company grew from about $400K in its first year to roughly $6M in ARR with a team of 25. He covers annual contract pricing, partnership-led distribution through AWS, the $5M the founders raised, and how they handled a cash crunch in 2023.

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Key moments

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Pricing by customer tier

“they pay around probably 10 to 20 k a year. And mid market is probably 50 to 100 k.”
Watch at 06:42

Pivot to partnerships over sales

“we decided instead of heavily relying on direct sales, we decided to go focused on partnerships. So we are fully based on AWS and we are a premium partner of AWS.”
Watch at 09:42

Halving expenses and acquisition costs

“However, what we did is that we cut all our expenses twice and the customer acquisition costs as well in half.”
Watch at 12:52

Lesson on VC support

“VCs are always less active in our case, based on our experience, than they claim to be.”
Watch at 17:14

Founders stop their own salaries

“The first decision we made is even before that happens, we stopped all the salaries to both of the founders.”
Watch at 23:12

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About the speaker

Vlad Malanin

Co-Founder & CTO · SpeedSize

Company revenue
$6M

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