In a CDN industry shaken by bankruptcies and consolidation, CDN77 stands out for a different reason: consistent profitability. VP of Client Solutions Tomas Bacik credits this to disciplined choices—bootstrapping the company, prioritizing client value, and running a lean, focused team. With no shareholders to appease, CDN77 can concentrate on long-term client success and growth.
Unlike others expanding into sprawling product portfolios, CDN77 doubles down on delivery—but redefines what that means. For Bacik, delivery includes more than caching: it spans cloud storage, ingest, media processing, edge compute, and security services, all tightly integrated to enhance performance. CDN77 also offers private setups for large clients, enabling deep customization without noisy-neighbor issues or inflated overhead. The result? A tailored experience, operational efficiency, and the freedom to grow sustainably.
Marc de Jong :
Hi, welcome at the Stream TV show. This is Marc de Jong at CDN Alliance. I have with me, I have Tom from CDN77.
Tomas Bacik:
Hi.
Marc de Jong :
Tom. Short question. There's a lot of things going on in the CDN industry right now, right? We have Edgio going bankrupt, Lumen going out of business, there's a lot of cost pressure, etc. etc. I looked at your numbers at beginning of the year, you're the one that make making a profit. Can you tell me what's the secret?
Tomas Bacik:
I wish that was a magic formula I could just share, but actually we've been profitable for the last 11 years in a row and I guess it's rather a chain of conscious decisions and an actions. So first of all, the company has been 100% bootstrapped, so there's no investors, no debt involved, and it's actually very refreshing when you have no shareholders to worry about. And our main goal, and the only goal I would say is to make our clients happy with our product and create value for them. So it's in the DNA of the entire company and it helps a lot.
Secondly, I think we keep the team small and focused. I think right now, we have three times fewer people, revenue dollar than what's usually in the industry. We're very focused on delivery and I'd say we actually make profit a priority. So again, it's a choice. We keep an eye on our revenues, we keep an eye on our expenses, we try to plan carefully, we try to grow responsibly if possible. And I'd say profit gives you freedom to make the right choices and decisions, and we want to be here for our clients in the long term.
Marc de Jong :
A longer time, a lot longer than all the other ones.
Tomas Bacik:
In short, I'd say define your value, focus on it, keep the operations tight, and always make sure that the business actually creates money.
Marc de Jong :
Okay, good. You mentioned it's keeping the operations tight, right? I know one of the trends that I see in the market is that more and more customization is required by the CDNs because customers don't want to, don't have the resources for it, it's getting too complicated for them. But typically, if you need a big service organization, et cetera, et cetera, basically eats in into your profit margins, how do you handle that? Still making a profit then?
Tomas Bacik:
It's a good question because I agree that CDNs are now becoming a full-fledged service organizations with the complexity of products that we offer. And I think actually customizations is something that we stand out. I'm confident to say that we're actually one of the most flexible CDNs on the market. I'd say for large clients, we do a lot of private setups. So as a client, you get a dedicated CPU, you don't fight for cash space with other clients, and it actually gives us opportunity to do customizations to an extent that we're not able or do not want to do on the shared infrastructure. So it usually solves the, say, noisy neighbor issues and it gives us much more control over capacity and performance needs. And since we're pretty much focused on delivery, we can concentrate a relatively narrow group of products. So that helps as well. And yeah.
Marc de Jong :
Cool. You mentioned you focus on delivery, right? If you look at the other CDNs, they've moved to security or they've moved into edge compute right now. Those are trends where they have different silos of different products that they do. You focus on delivery. How does that work if the other ones are moving that part where they think they're going to make money and you're staying on the delivery part? How does that work?
Tomas Bacik:
Yeah, it all depends and comes down to how we define delivery.
Marc de Jong :
True.
Tomas Bacik:
So very faithful to delivery. It's still our core product, but I guess we keep continuing redefining what delivery entails actually. So obviously, we no longer think of delivery as a caching service, but rather as the entire ecosystem. So we support cloud storage, media processing services, ingest obviously caching service, edge compute, as well as security. You can think of web application firewalls, various types of DDoS protection. But instead of just introducing standalone products, we tend to think and invest in products that are closely tied to delivery and contribute meaningfully to the overall delivery experience. So it's another part how to actually keep the company lean, but very efficient. So it's the focus.
Marc de Jong :
By making sure that it's all connected with each other and stuff. All right. Thank you, Tom, for your time.
Tomas Bacik:
Thank you for having me.
Marc de Jong :
Thank you.