Creating Blue Ocean Categories: How One Startup is Rethinking Enterprise Tech Stack Management
Enterprise software founders face a critical decision early on: compete in an existing category or create a new one. For Entrio founder Avi Cohen, the conventional wisdom of fitting into established categories like SaaS management didn't align with what he was hearing from financial institutions.
"We actually created a new category and it was a challenge that we're facing this intersection of maybe we should try to fit ourselves into an existing category, just go forward with something that we believe is kind of a blue ocean category," Avi explains in a recent Category Visionaries episode.
The path to this decision started with a classic startup pivot. Initially, Entrio aimed to help banks get exposure to external innovation and new technologies. But through customer conversations, they discovered what Avi calls "the iceberg phenomena" - the real problem wasn't above water, but underneath.
"What we thought was the biggest problem above the water turned out to be a mistake," Avi shares. "When we started to talk to a lot of financial institutions, we understood that the problem is not actually above the water, is underneath the water."
This insight led them to focus on helping enterprises better utilize their existing tech stacks rather than adding new tools. The challenge was how to position this solution in the market. Existing categories like SaaS management only captured a fraction of what they were doing, as Avi notes: "SaaS represents a very small portion of their technology stack. So at least 75 or 80% of their technology stack is still either on prem or is being delivered in a different way."
Instead of forcing themselves into an ill-fitting category, they created a new one: tech adoption. This wasn't just a marketing decision - it shaped their entire go-to-market approach. They focused on enterprise architects within financial institutions, positioning themselves as a solution for better utilizing existing technology investments.
Their GTM motion evolved to address different segments of the market. "What we've been investing a lot of time in the last couple of months is actually how can we take the brand that we build, the new language, the branding, the new category around tech adoption and responsible tech adoption and try to bring it into downstream potential customers," Avi explains.
A key part of their success has been adapting their product delivery to enterprise needs. When customers pushed back on having to adopt a new UI, they pivoted to an API-first approach. As Avi recounts: "They said that the organization is so accustomed already to a certain UI and UX that they would rather have all of the beautiful things that we can provide...But it doesn't have to come through our own UI."
This flexibility has helped them overcome one of the biggest challenges in selling to banks - the notoriously long sales cycles. "In the banking industry, especially with financial services, but particularly, I think with banks and insurance companies, the average sales cycle is something like 24 months from the first meeting to the moment you sign a contract," Avi notes.
Their solution? Create a data-first approach that minimizes what they need from banks to deliver value. "We created a situation where as a data company, we own the data and we created this data lake that encompasses every technology solution in the world," Avi explains. This has helped reduce sales cycles to 6-12 months - still long, but significantly better than industry standard.
Looking ahead, Avi envisions Entrio becoming the standard platform for technology decisions in financial institutions. It's a bold vision, but one that stems from deep understanding of their market's needs rather than just ambition.
The lesson for founders? Sometimes the best category isn't one that exists yet. But creating a new one requires more than just clever marketing - it needs to be grounded in real customer problems and backed by a product that delivers unique value.