How Allure Security Built GTM Motion Around Customer-Led Proof When VCs Want Hockey Sticks

How Allure Security Built GTM Motion Around Customer-Led Proof When VCs Want Hockey Sticks

Every pitch deck has the same slide: the hockey stick. Up and to the right, exponentially, preferably going viral somewhere around month six. Investors want to see it. Founders feel pressured to promise it. The entire startup mythology revolves around explosive, rapid, preferably venture-backed growth.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Josh Shaul, CEO of Allure Security, described a different path. No viral moment. No growth hack. No massive marketing budget creating artificial momentum. Just methodical customer acquisition, obsessive focus on delivering results, and the patient accumulation of something more valuable than pageviews: proof.

“We’re a small series seed funded company and we’re seeing great traction. We’re just about to go out and raise a series A,” Josh explained. “We’ve got the sort of typical early series A metrics that you’d expect to see with the startup growing really rapidly, growing about 10% compound monthly growth rate right now, which is really exciting for us.”

Ten percent compound monthly growth. It sounds modest compared to the 20X growth stories that dominate Twitter. But in a market saturated with broken promises and skeptical buyers, Allure Security discovered that proof points compound faster than ad spend.

The Market That Stopped Believing

The challenge Allure Security faced wasn’t competition—it was accumulated disappointment. They were entering a market where the core problem had existed for 27 years and dozens of vendors had promised solutions that failed to deliver.

“The toughest thing for us has been that this problem has been around forever. 27 years ago, people were sending out scams targeting America Online usernames and passwords,” Josh explained. “And because the problem has been around since the Internet has been around, there’s a tremendous amount of disbelief that the problem is even solvable.”

This created a paradox. Organizations recognized brand impersonation as a critical problem. They understood the value of solving it. They had budget allocated to address it. But they fundamentally didn’t believe any vendor could actually solve it.

“We go out to organizations, they recognize that this is a problem for them. They recognize that they have tremendous value in solving the problem. And then they look at us and like, well, we tried three different things already. Never come close to solving the problem. Why should I believe that your magic is the magic that’s going to solve it for us?” Josh said.

This is where most startups turn to marketing. Build a bigger brand. Run more ads. Create more content. Generate more inbound. The theory: if you’re loud enough, buyers will pay attention.

Josh recognized that volume wouldn’t solve this problem. No amount of marketing could overcome the scar tissue from previous vendor failures. The only currency that mattered was proof.

The First Customer Problem

In markets demanding proof, you face a chicken-and-egg problem. Buyers want references before they’ll buy. But you need buyers to create references.

“As a startup, that’s very challenging because you’ve got the great story, you’ve got the great vision, but you don’t have the proof points yet,” Josh acknowledged.

This is where most founders get stuck. They have the technology. They have the pitch. They have the roadmap. What they don’t have is the track record that skeptical buyers demand before taking a risk on an unproven vendor.

Allure Security’s approach required accepting a painful reality: their early growth would be constrained by their ability to deliver results, not by their ability to generate leads. The bottleneck wasn’t top of funnel—it was proof of value.

This meant landing those first customers however possible, then treating their success as the company’s most valuable asset. No cutting corners. No overpromising. No declaring victory prematurely. Just relentless focus on ensuring those early customers got undeniable results they’d be willing to share.

Converting Customers to Advocates

The breakthrough came when Allure Security accumulated enough successful customers to change their entire sales motion.

“We’re now to the point where we have the proof points and we have a dozen or so publicly referenceable customers that will go out and say, you can believe that they’re going to do this for you because you can look at the results that they’re delivering for us,” Josh explained. “And that’s made it a lot easier for us as putting our customers in front of our prospects.”

This wasn’t about case studies on a website. It was about creating a portfolio of customers so satisfied with results that they’d actively advocate for Allure Security in sales conversations. Real customers. Real results. Real testimonials that prospects could verify.

The GTM motion became customer-led by design. Rather than sales reps fighting to overcome objections, satisfied customers did the heavy lifting. The sales process transformed from “convince skeptical buyers” to “connect prospects with similar customers who’ve already seen results.”

This approach has several compounding advantages. Every successful customer increases the likelihood of landing the next one. Geographic expansion happens through word-of-mouth within verticals. Customer acquisition costs decrease as the advocacy portfolio grows. And most importantly, you’re growing with customers who actually value what you do, not ones convinced by aggressive sales tactics.

The Integrity Requirement

Making this strategy work required something most startups struggle with: radical honesty about capabilities.

In cybersecurity, vendors routinely promise comprehensive threat elimination. Competitors told buyers they could stop all brand impersonation. Josh refused to make that claim.

“You just can’t stop people from putting things on the Internet, so the ability to completely eliminate the problem just isn’t there,” he acknowledged. Instead, Allure Security promises to “dramatically reduce the impact of scams on a business to the point that those scams aren’t having a meaningful business impact.”

This honesty creates short-term pain. “I’m going to say what you do what you say kind of guy. But I swear I miss a lot of opportunity as a result of it,” Josh admitted. “Sometimes those short term decisions of hey, we’re not going to take that business, hey, we’re not going to make that promise, hey, I know that the competitor is making that promise and they can’t deliver, but we’re not going to do the same thing. Sometimes that’s painful.”

But customer-led GTM motion requires this integrity. You can’t build a advocacy engine on disappointed customers. Every overpromise that leads to underdelivery destroys the foundation of the entire strategy.

Josh’s reconciliation with turning away business: “Somebody just made a promise they can’t deliver and they’re going to end up with an unhappy customer down the road who’s never going to want to do business with them again. And I’ll still be there as the one who is honest with them and hopefully that they’ll remember that.”

The Compound Effect

What Allure Security discovered is that customer-led growth compounds differently than marketing-led growth. Marketing-driven growth is linear: double the spend, roughly double the leads. Customer-led growth is exponential: each successful customer makes the next one easier to close.

The numbers bear this out. That 10% compound monthly growth rate means Allure Security roughly triples annually. They’re approaching their Series A with metrics investors recognize—not because they manufactured viral growth, but because they built sustainable momentum through customer success.

Their primary verticals—financial services and ecommerce—are seeing concentrated growth. “For us the primary vertical where we’re seeing the most traction is in financial services, banks, credit unions, broker dealers, and even in the crypto space. We also see quite a bit of traction in ecommerce. Fashion brands are really heavily targeted by impersonation attacks,” Josh shared.

This vertical concentration amplifies the customer-led effect. When one bank sees results, word spreads through banking networks. Fashion brands talk to other fashion brands. Each success creates gravitational pull within its vertical.

The Patient Capital Requirement

This strategy requires patient capital and patient founders. There’s no viral moment in month three. No hockey stick that suddenly appears. No growth hack that 10Xs your metrics overnight.

What you get instead is durable growth built on genuine value delivery. Customers who stay because they’re getting results, not because switching costs are high. Expansion revenue from satisfied customers, not just new logo acquisition. And perhaps most valuable: a moat built from reputation and proof that competitors can’t easily replicate.

Josh’s approach won’t make headlines celebrating “startup grows 50X in six months.” But it built a company preparing for Series A with sustainable metrics, happy customers, and a GTM motion that gets stronger with each successful implementation.

In a market that had stopped believing solutions existed, Allure Security proved that sometimes the best growth strategy is the one where you just do what you say you’ll do—and let satisfied customers tell everyone else.