Authentic’s Zero-Marketing GTM: How Word-of-Mouth Works in Small, Concentrated Markets

Authentic’s Zero-Marketing GTM: How Word-of-Mouth Works in Small, Concentrated Markets

No content marketing team. No account-based marketing campaigns. No outbound SDR squad. Just five months post-launch, Authentic is seeing pipeline grow through pure word-of-mouth in the insurtech space.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Cole Riccardi, CEO and Founder of Authentic, revealed a marketing philosophy that contradicts almost every B2B playbook: do exceptional work for a small group of customers and let the market talk. It’s working—but only because insurtech has three specific characteristics that make this viable. Miss any one of them, and word-of-mouth becomes a fantasy that bleeds runway.

Here’s how to know if your market qualifies, and what to do if it does.

The Anti-Marketing Philosophy

Cole’s approach to marketing is disarmingly simple. “My marketing philosophy as CEO is insurance is a relatively small space, insure tech I should say, and a lot of these different channels that we’re pitching, they all talk,” he explains. “So all of the vertical software folks we’re pitching talk, all of the franchisors talk, all of the associations talk.”

The logic flows from this observation: “If we just do such an incredible job with a small subset of customers and our product is really that great and creating that much value, that channel will hear about it.”

This isn’t inspirational founder platitudes. Five months after launch, it’s producing results. “We’re really excited to see kind of the word of mouth that’s been happening within these channels for the value that we’re creating for folks,” Cole notes.

But before you cancel your marketing budget and tell your team to “just build a great product,” understand why this works for Authentic—and probably doesn’t work for you.

Condition One: The Market Must Be Genuinely Small

When Cole says “small,” he doesn’t mean niche. He means small. Authentic’s entire addressable market might be a few thousand companies across three channels: franchisors, vertical software companies, and associations. That’s it.

In a market this small, everyone actually does know everyone. The CEO of a major vertical software company knows the CEOs of the other major players. They speak at the same conferences. They’re in the same Slack channels. They compare notes on vendors.

This creates information velocity that doesn’t exist in larger markets. When Authentic delivers exceptional value to one vertical software company, the other nineteen companies they’re targeting hear about it through direct conversations, not LinkedIn posts.

The test for your market: can you literally list out your top 100 target customers by name? Not by segment or criteria—actual company names. If you can’t, your market probably isn’t small enough for pure word-of-mouth.

Condition Two: The Channels Must Be Concentrated

Size alone isn’t enough. The market also needs to be concentrated—meaning your target customers cluster in identifiable channels that have their own communication networks.

Cole identified three channels for Authentic: franchisors, vertical software companies, and associations. Each channel is its own ecosystem with established relationships and regular communication. “All of the vertical software folks we’re pitching talk, all of the franchisors talk, all of the associations talk,” he observes.

This concentration matters because it creates natural amplification. When you do great work for one customer in a channel, the information spreads through the existing network. You’re not trying to get noticed in the noise of the broader market—you’re entering a conversation that’s already happening.

The franchise channel is a perfect example. Franchisors regularly discuss vendors, challenges, and solutions with each other. They attend the same industry events. They’re in the same peer groups. When one franchisor has a great experience with Authentic’s captive insurance platform, that story reaches other franchisors through channels Cole doesn’t need to create or access directly.

The test for your market: do your target customers already talk to each other regularly? Is there an existing communication infrastructure—conferences, associations, private communities—where information naturally flows?

Condition Three: Sophistication Must Be High Enough to Recognize Real Value

The third condition is more subtle: your target customers need to be sophisticated enough to recognize real value when they see it, and cynical enough to ignore marketing noise.

Cole’s customers aren’t buying based on ads or content marketing. They’re “very smart people” who’ve seen every pitch, tried multiple vendors, and know the difference between genuine innovation and repackaged mediocrity. “I think everyone has a different strategy to fundraising. I have told our team over the last nine months that the work we do right now is for fundraising, because if you build a great business and are able to tell a great story, then you will be able to raise money,” Cole reflects.

This sophistication actually enables word-of-mouth. When a CFO at a vertical software company tells another CFO that Authentic’s captive model delivers superior economics to traditional partnerships, that carries weight. It’s a peer recommendation from someone who evaluated the alternatives and chose based on substance.

The test for your market: are your customers sophisticated buyers who’ve seen your competitors and can articulate why one solution is better than another? Or are they early in their journey and need education to even understand the category?

What This Strategy Requires: Exceptional Product and Service

Here’s what makes Cole’s approach hard: it demands execution excellence. You can’t fake your way through word-of-mouth in a small, concentrated market of sophisticated buyers.

“If we just do such an incredible job with a small subset of customers and our product is really that great and creating that much value, that channel will hear about it,” Cole explains. Notice the dependencies: incredible job, great product, real value. All three must be true.

In a traditional marketing-driven GTM, you can sometimes paper over product gaps with messaging, positioning, or aggressive sales tactics. In a word-of-mouth model, your product is your marketing. If it’s not exceptional, the market will know—and they’ll tell each other.

This is why Authentic spent significant effort on what Cole calls “regulatory IP”—building infrastructure that makes captive insurance scalable while navigating complex compliance requirements. The product had to actually solve the problem better than alternatives. Marketing couldn’t compensate for a mediocre solution.

The Budget Reallocation: From Marketing to Product

If you’re not spending on content, ABM, and outbound, where does that budget go? For companies in markets that qualify for word-of-mouth GTM, the answer is product and customer success.

Authentic recently hired a head of go-to-market, but the role isn’t about demand generation. It’s about “partner or customer activation”—ensuring customers get maximum value from the platform. The logic is straightforward: activated customers who achieve real results become your marketing engine.

This represents a fundamental budget reallocation. Traditional B2B companies might spend 30-40% of revenue on marketing and sales. In a word-of-mouth model, you’re shifting those dollars into product development, implementation support, and customer success. Your CAC doesn’t disappear—it just moves from demand generation to delivery excellence.

The Timeline Reality: Word-of-Mouth Is Slow to Start

The trap with word-of-mouth GTM is the J-curve. For the first several months, growth feels painfully slow. You’re investing heavily in delivering exceptional value to early customers, but the flywheel hasn’t started spinning yet.

Cole launched Authentic’s product and is five months in. The word-of-mouth is “happening,” but this isn’t explosive viral growth. It’s steady, qualified pipeline from the right customers—exactly what you want in enterprise B2B, but nerve-wracking when you’re used to measuring marketing by MQLs and pipeline generation.

The timeline depends on your sales cycle and how long it takes customers to experience value. For Authentic, customers need to launch their captive program, see the economics work, and feel confident enough to recommend it. That takes quarters, not weeks.

The test for your situation: do you have enough runway to let word-of-mouth compound? If you need to show explosive growth in six months to raise your next round, word-of-mouth probably isn’t your primary GTM motion.

When Word-of-Mouth Isn’t Enough: The Self-Service Expansion

Even in markets that qualify for pure word-of-mouth at the high end, Authentic is building a self-service model for customers who don’t meet the enterprise bar. “We are starting to build a little bit more of a self service model for folks that aren’t really large vertical software companies. They can still come to our website, look at our docs and start their own captive in a self service way,” Cole notes.

This expansion reveals the limits of word-of-mouth. It works brilliantly for the “largest kind of leading edge vertical software companies” and the “mighty middle and above in the franchise space.” But smaller customers in these channels need a different motion—one that probably does require content, documentation, and self-service infrastructure.

The lesson: word-of-mouth works for your core ICP in a small, concentrated market. It probably doesn’t work for everyone who could theoretically benefit from your product.

The Decision Framework: Should You Bet on Word-of-Mouth?

Your market qualifies for word-of-mouth primary GTM if:

All three conditions exist: Small market (you can name your top 100 targets), concentrated channels (they already talk to each other), and high sophistication (they recognize real value).

Your product is genuinely superior. Not marginally better—meaningfully better in ways your target customers will notice and discuss.

You have runway for the J-curve. Word-of-mouth compounds slowly. You need 12-18 months of patience while building the initial customer base.

Enterprise ACV justifies the model. Authentic doesn’t need 500 customers to build a billion-dollar company—they need 20 to 60 of the right ones. Your economics need to support this.

If all four are true, Cole’s approach offers a compelling alternative to the marketing arms race. Your competitors will outspend you on content and ads. But in a small, concentrated market of sophisticated buyers, exceptional product delivered to the right customers will outperform all the marketing budget in the world.

Just make sure you actually have all four conditions. Otherwise, you’re not doing word-of-mouth GTM—you’re just not doing marketing.