Gr4vy’s Contrarian Path to Growth: Why They’re Growing 2x Monthly by Focusing on Existing Customers
In an era where “growth at all costs” dominates startup strategy, some companies are finding remarkable success by taking the opposite approach.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, John Lunn, CEO and Founder of Gr4vy, revealed how focusing on customer success rather than rapid acquisition has led to exponential growth.
Breaking Away from the Growth-First Mindset
Gr4vy launched during the boom times, when the prevailing wisdom pushed for rapid scaling. “A lot of the advice at the time is grow very quickly, spend, grow, get as big as you can, as fast as you can,” John recalls. “And then the wheels fell off that sort of model.”
This experience led to a fundamental shift in their growth strategy. Instead of chasing new logos, they focused on growing with existing customers.
The Power of Deep Customer Relationships
The results have been remarkable: “doubling month on month” in transactions and revenue that has “tripled in the last quarter.” But what’s most striking is how they achieved this growth. “The rise in volume is not because we’re adding hundreds and hundreds of new clients,” John explains. “It’s because we’re growing with the customers we’ve got today.”
This success stems from their approach to customer relationships: “You talk to a Gr4vy customer, they’ll say, Gr4vy feels like it’s part of our team, and that’s by design.”
Building for Enterprise Scale
Their infrastructure-as-a-service model supports this customer-centric approach. “Unlike anyone else in this space, the way that we do orchestration is infrastructure as a software service rather than a SaaS service,” John notes. “You don’t connect to Gr4vy for Gr4vy to do your orchestration. Gr4vy rolls out instances of Gr4vy for you within your same region, your same area that allows you to manage orchestration.”
This architecture enables them to grow with their customers’ needs, providing enterprise-grade scalability and reliability.
The ICP Evolution
Understanding their ideal customer profile (ICP) was crucial to this strategy. “For us, an ICP is a mid to enterprise sized retailer looking to either expand geographically or increase their payment options,” John explains. This focus on larger enterprises meant fewer, but more valuable, customer relationships.
They also discovered an important principle about enterprise sales: “Don’t sell to people who aren’t shopping.” This insight helped them focus their efforts on customers with active needs rather than trying to create demand.
From Product to Partnership
The shift from being just a vendor to becoming a strategic partner required rethinking their entire approach to customer engagement. “We work very closely with our customers,” John shares. “We help them in all different areas, aren’t necessarily something we do.”
This commitment to customer success has created a virtuous cycle: as customers grow, Gr4vy grows with them, creating deep, lasting partnerships rather than transactional relationships.
Lessons for Enterprise Founders
Gr4vy’s experience offers several key insights for enterprise founders:
- Focus on customer success before customer acquisition
- Build infrastructure that can scale with customer growth
- Become a strategic partner, not just a vendor
- Target customers with active needs
Their journey shows that in enterprise software, sustainable growth often comes from helping existing customers succeed rather than constantly chasing new ones. As John emphasizes, “Getting it right and then growing from there based on revenue is a better way to grow.”
This approach has positioned Gr4vy to achieve their vision of becoming “the central point of integrations for retailers around the world with their payment types.” Their story demonstrates that sometimes the best path to growth is focusing on depth rather than breadth.