Ready to build your own Founder-Led Growth engine? Book a Strategy Call
Frontlines.io | Where B2B Founders Talk GTM.
Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Identify a Critical Market Gap Through Personal Experience:
Itzik’s motivation to create Entro Security came from his firsthand experience dealing with multiple cybersecurity breaches involving non-human identities. Founders should closely analyze pain points they encounter in their own careers to uncover high-impact opportunities that may not be adequately addressed by existing solutions.
Operational Efficiency is Key in the Early Stages:
After their seed raise, Itzik and his team quickly moved into execution mode, addressing operational necessities like office space, hiring, and banking. Having a pre-compiled checklist before raising funds allows founders to hit the ground running, making early progress smoother and more structured.
Secure Early Design Partners for Product Validation:
Itzik highlighted the importance of securing early design partners to validate the product’s direction. Founders should seek out potential customers, even if they aren’t paying at first, to ensure product-market fit and to gather invaluable feedback on how to refine their solution.
Stand Out with Memorable Branding, Even in B2B:
In an industry where many companies blend in, Itzik chose to make Entro’s branding fun and distinct, aligning more with a B2C vibe while maintaining a B2B focus. For founders, this highlights the value of bold and memorable branding to differentiate in competitive markets, even in traditionally serious sectors like cybersecurity.
Tailor Event Participation to Your Goals:
When approaching industry events, Itzik emphasized having a clear objective, whether it’s lead generation or brand awareness. Founders should be strategic with their event investments, focusing resources on aligning with the event's strengths, like pipeline creation or positioning, to maximize ROI.
Conversation
Highlights
Breaking Into Cybersecurity: How Three Breaches Led to a $24M Company
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Itzik Alvas, CEO and Co-Founder of Entro Security, shared how repeated security failures became the foundation for building an entirely new market category. His story offers a masterclass in identifying genuine market pain, creating a category from scratch, and making bold branding choices that defy industry conventions.
The Breaking Point: When Failure Becomes Opportunity
Most founders claim they’re solving a problem they’ve experienced. Itzik lived it three times over. “After being breached for the third time. And after not being able to find solution that will help me resolve the problem, you know, I started to think maybe I should build something,” he explains.
The specificity matters here. As a security leader at Microsoft, Itzik was responsible for the internal security of one of the company’s three main clouds. “Were breached twice by non human identities over there,” he recalls. Before that, as CISO of a healthcare organization, the same vulnerability struck again. This wasn’t academic research or casual observation—it was repeated, painful failure at scale.
What’s instructive is what happened next. Rather than immediately jumping to build a solution, Itzik first tried to find existing tools. Only after exhausting the market did he consider building something new. This sequence matters for founders evaluating whether their problem is truly unsolved.
Defining the Undefined: Category Creation as Go-to-Market
Non-human identity management didn’t exist as a category when Entro started. “That’s a very new category. We helped pioneer that,” Itzik notes. “Were the first company out there to do that, and now there are a lot of companies.”
Here’s how Itzik frames the problem: “Non human identities are essentially programmatic access keys, like service accounts, API keys, connection strings, cloud access tokens.” The key insight? “Developers, DevOps users are the ones who are creating permissioning. Them, using them are without security oversight and they scatter them around so they, you know, committing them into code, they are sending them over slack and no one is actually managing their lifecycle.”
The GTM implication is significant. “We needed to build that category. We needed to drive a lot of market education about why is it a serious problem,” Itzik explains. When you’re pioneering a category, you’re not just competing for market share—you’re creating the market itself. This requires a fundamentally different marketing approach than playing in an established space.
The Branding Gamble: Fun in a Serious Industry
Walk through any cybersecurity conference and you’ll see what Itzik means: “The usual cybersecurity companies are blue and white and somewhat black and very serious approach.” Entro deliberately went the opposite direction.
“I led security for a long while and, you know, I wanted something that looks and feels more, you know, young and fun and that’s definitely the approach that we went to,” he shares. “The main goal was to make it as fun as B2C, but definitely still B2B company.”
This wasn’t cosmetic. In a market where category creation is the strategy, being memorable becomes a competitive advantage. When asked if the playful branding cost them deals, Itzik’s response is telling: “I don’t know if someone came into the website and left because they feel like that’s not serious enough for them. Hopefully, you know, the logos out there and the customer acquisitions and the stuff we’re doing means more.”
The lesson for founders: differentiation through branding works when the substance backs it up. The fun aesthetic gets attention, but customer logos and product performance close deals.
Event Strategy: Knowing What You’re Actually Buying
Most B2B companies treat events as a checkbox—attend, set up a booth, collect leads. Itzik’s approach is more surgical. “I think that you should force yourself, what is your goal coming into that event?” he asks.
His framework breaks events into distinct categories: “Big boots over there. I’m not sure if they are very helpful in terms of, you know, legion and creating new leads and creating pipelines, but they are great for brand awareness and for positioning and some other, you know, events are the other way around. They are great for pipeline creation but not that great for brand awareness.”
The tactical takeaway: “You need to understand what you’re trying to get out of that event. And then, you know, you can align the other stuff like the size of the boot on which people to bring in and what to do over there.” This clarity prevents the common mistake of measuring the wrong outcomes or making misaligned investments.
Fundraising: The Seed-to-Series A Chasm
Itzik draws a sharp distinction between raising seed and Series A capital. “I think it’s very different between the seed and day round,” he observes.
At seed: “You need to mainly sell an idea, but that should be somewhat of a calculated risk in terms of you’ve done your market research, you interviewed your customers, you are getting to repetitive circle with your market around the questions that you’re asking them and the answers you are getting from them.”
The Series A bar is different: “You should have customers, you should have reached the $1 million mark. Your customers should use your product, love your product. All of them should use it in the same way, by the way, like if you’re, if each customer is using a different portion of the product, that’s not, not as good as it can be.”
That last point deserves emphasis. Product-market fit isn’t just about having customers—it’s about having customers who use your product the same way. Scattered use cases suggest you haven’t found the repeatable motion yet.
The Path Forward: Leading Identity
Itzik’s vision extends beyond non-human identities. “To lead the identity market, for sure,” he states. “There are a lot of companies that have done great things with the identity market. Most of them are more often on premise solutions and the cloud is much larger.”
This positioning reveals strategic thinking about market evolution. By establishing leadership in non-human identity management first, Entro creates a beachhead to expand into broader identity management as cloud adoption accelerates.
The Entro story demonstrates that category creation, while challenging, follows a pattern: experience the problem deeply, validate that no solution exists, build something genuinely different, invest heavily in market education, and make bold choices that ensure you’re remembered. For founders considering whether to pioneer a new category or compete in an existing one, Itzik’s journey offers a roadmap—and a reminder that sometimes the best opportunities hide in the problems everyone experiences but nobody has solved.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Kyle Hanslovan
CEO & Co-Founder of Huntress
What happens when you outgrow your messaging? w/ Huntress CEO Kyle Hanslovan
Bob Tinker
CEO & Co-Founder of BlueRock
How BlueRock identified three distinct buyer personas by asking “How would you describe what we do to your peers?” | Bob Tinker
Michael Assraf
CEO & Founder of Flamingo
How Flamingo generated 1,000 waitlist signups before launching a product using a free community tool | Michael Assraf
Jason Martin
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Permiso Security
Jason Martin, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Permiso Security: $10 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Security
Rohan Sathe
Co-Founder & CEO of Nightfall AI
How Nightfall AI uses CISO dinners to generate pipeline | Rohan Sathe
Umaimah Khan
CEO and Co-Founder of Opal Security
Umaimah Khan, CEO & Co-Founder of Opal Security: $32 Million Raised to Build the Future of Identity Security
John Milburn
CEO of Clear Skye
John Milburn, CEO of Clear Skye: More Than $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Identity and Access Governance
Harley Sugarman
Founder & CEO of Anagram
Harley Sugarman, Founder & CEO of Anagram: $10 Million Raised to Transform Human-Driven Security
Tony Scott
CEO & President of Intrusion
How the ex-White House CIO turned around a failing cybersecurity company by fixing the product first | Tony Scott
Joe Levy
CEO of Sophos
Joe Levy, CEO of Sophos: $1.5 Billion ARR and the Future of Cybersecurity at Scale
Stephen de Vries
CEO and Co-Founder of IriusRisk
Stephen de Vries, CEO and Co-Founder of IriusRisk: $40 Million Raised to Build the Future of Threat Modeling
Justin Beals
CEO, Co-Founder of Strike Graph
Justin Beals, CEO of Strike Graph: $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of Automated Security and Compliance
Jessica Pratt
Director of Marketing and Communications of Peak Metrics
How PeakMetrics Turns Product Data Into Marketing Gold
Matthew Howard
SVP & CMO of Virtru
How to Time Analyst Relations for Maximum Category Impact
Amit Gupta
Senior Director of Marketing Operations of Fortanix
Why Marketing Ops Should Be Your First GTM Hire
Mykolas Rambus
CEO & Co-Founder of Hush
Mykolas Rambus, CEO & Co-Founder of Hush: $7.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Data Privacy
Oren Kaniel
CEO & Co-Founder of AppsFlyer
Oren Kaniel: The GTM Story of AppsFlyer ($2 Billion Valuation)
Dave Mor
CEO and Co-Founder of OneLayer
Dave Mor, CEO and Co-Founder of OneLayer: $15 Million Raised to Protect Private Cellular Networks
Josh Shaul
CEO of Allure Security
Josh Shaul, CEO of Allure Security: $6 Million Raised to Help Businesses Win the Battle Against Online Scammers
Arjun Bhatnagar
CEO & Co-Founder of Cloaked
Arjun Bhatnagar, CEO of Cloaked: $25 Million Raised to Build the Future of Data Privacy
Tom Tovar
CEO and Co-Founder of AppDome
Tom Tovar, CEO of AppDome: Over $26 Million Raised to Build the Future of Mobile App Security
Pukar Hamal
CEO and Founder of SecurityPal
Pukar Hamal, CEO and Founder of SecurityPal: $21 Million Raised to Power the Future of Customer Assurance
Adam Cecchetti
CEO & Co-Founder of Staris AI
Adam Cecchetti, CEO & Co-Founder of Staris AI: $5.7 Million Raised to Build Total Context Security for Application Protection
Tony Lombardo
VP of Marketing of ThreatModeler Software
Why 99% of Cybersecurity Marketers Are Doing Demand Gen Wrong
Kyle Hanslovan
CEO & Co-Founder of Huntress
Kyle Hanslovan, CEO of Huntress: $160 Million Raised to Build the Future of Managed Security
Tom Jermoluk
CEO of Beyond Identity
Tom “TJ” Jermoluk, CEO of Beyond Identity: $200 Million Raised to Build the Future of Multi-Factor Authentication
Carole Winqwist
CMO of GitGuardian
How to Win with Rapid Response: GitGuardian’s Media Playbook
Arie Zilberstein
CEO and Co-Founder of Gem Security
Arie Zilberstein, CEO and Co-Founder of Gem Security: $34 Million Raised to Power the Future of Cloud Detection and Response
Mike Janke
Co-Founder of Data Tribe
Funding the Future: Mike Janke, Co-Founder of Data Tribe
Edward Wu
CEO and Founder of Dropzone AI
Edward Wu, CEO & Founder of Dropzone AI: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI SOC Analysts
Joshua Motta
CEO & Co-Founder of Coalition
Joshua Motta: How Coalition Created the “Active Insurance” Category ($5B Valuation)
Matteo Bogana
CEO and Co-Founder of Cleafy
Matteo Bogana, CEO & Co-Founder of Cleafy: $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of Online Fraud Prevention
Marina Segal
CEO and Co-Founder of Tamnoon
Marina Segal, CEO & Co-Founder of Tamnoon: Over $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Security
Dimitri Sirota
CEO & Co-Founder of BigID
Dimitri Sirota: The GTM Story of BigID ($1.25 Billion Valuation)
David Etue
CEO of Nisos
David Etue, CEO of Nisos: $33 Million Raised to Build the Future of Managed Intelligence
Michael Assraf
CEO & Co-Founder of Vicarius
Michael Assraf, CEO of Vicarius: $29 Million Raised to Build the Future of Vulnerability Prioritization
David Brumley
CEO of Mayhem
David Brumley, CEO of Mayhem: $38 Million Raised to Build the Future of Security Testing
Robert Cowart
CEO & Co-Founder of ElastiFlow
Robert Cowart, CEO & Co-Founder of ElastiFlow: $8 Million Raised to Power the Future of Network Performance and Security Analytics
Ayal Yogev
CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna
Ayal Yogev, CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna: $42 Million to Build The Future of Confidential Computing
Austin Gadient
CTO & Co-Founder of Vali Cyber
Austin Gadient, CTO & Co-Founder of Vali Cyber: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of Linux Security
Alan LeFort
CEO of StrongestLayer
How StrongestLayer achieved 85% meeting-to-POC and 100% POC-to-win rates using transparent one-week pilots | Alan LeFort
Jean Le Bouthillier
CEO of Qohash
Jean Le Bouthillier, CEO of Qohash: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Data Security
Bill Moore
CEO and Founder of XONA
Bill Moore, CEO and Founder of XONA: $30 Million Raised to Build the Future of OT User Access
Sebastian Stranieri
CEO & Founder of VU Security
Sebastian Stranieri, CEO & Founder of VU Security: $24 Million Raised to Build the Future of Digital Identity & Fraud Prevention
Spencer Thompson
CEO and Co-Founder of Prelude
Spencer Thompson, CEO and Co-Founder of Prelude: Over $30 Million Raised to Build the Future of Continuous Security Testing
Dan Lorenc
CEO & Founder of Chainguard
Dan Lorenc, CEO & Founder of Chainguard: $250 Million Raised to Power the Future of Software Supply Chain Security
Eddie DeCurtis
Co-Founder and CEO of Shush
How Shush differentiated against competitors by solving business operations, not just deploying technology | Eddie DeCurtis, Co-Founder & CEO of Shush Inc.
Tiffany Ricks
CEO and Founder of HacWare
Tiffany Ricks, CEO and Founder of HacWare: $2.6 Million Raised to Build the Future of Security Awareness
Lisa O’Reilly
Vice President of Marketing of iVerify
How iVerify’s First Marketing Hire Built a Research-Driven Engine
Tom Jermoluk
CEO of Beyond Identity
Tom “TJ” Jermoluk: The GTM Storyteller of Beyond Identity ($1.1 Billion Valuation)
Dan Lowden
CMO of Blackbird.AI
How to Create a Category: Dan Lowden’s 8-Exit CMO Playbook
Colby Proffitt
VP of Marketing of Shift5
From the Pentagon to B2B: Colby Proffitt’s Journey and ABM Insights
Eric Olden
CEO and Founder of Strata Identity
Eric Olden, CEO and Founder of Strata Identity: $42 Million Raised to Build the Identity Orchestration Category
Russell Spitler
CEO & Co-Founder of Nudge Security
Russell Spitler, CEO & Co-Founder of Nudge Security: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of SaaS Security
Ani Chaudhuri
CEO & Co-Founder of Dasera
Ani Chaudhuri, CEO & Co-Founder of Dasera: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Data Security
Peter Prizio Jr
CEO of SnapAttack
Peter Prizio Jr, CEO of SnapAttack: $8 Million Raised to Power the Future of Threat Management
Ryan Schonfeld
Founder & CEO of Hivewatch
Ryan Schonfeld, CEO of Hivewatch: $25 Million Raised to Build the OS of Physical Security
Rodrigo Leme
Marketing Director of Right-Hand Cybersecurity
Rodrigo Leme, Marketing Director at Right-Hand Cybersecurity: Standing Out in a Crowded Market – Niche Targeting and Customer-Centric Approach
Scott McCrady
CEO of SolCyber
Scott McCrady, CEO of SolCyber: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Managed Security
Christian Almenar
CEO & Co-Founder of Monad
Christian Almenar, CEO of Monad: $19 Million Raised to Solve the Cybersecurity Big Data Problem
Ori Eisen
CEO & Founder of Trusona
Ori Eisen, CEO & Founder of Trusona: $38 Million Raised to Power the Future of Account Takeover Prevention
Ben Kliger
CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity
Ben Kliger, CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity: $21.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Security and Governance for AI, Low-Code, and No-Code Development
Ryan Lasmaili
CEO & Co-Founder of Vaultree
Ryan Lasmaili, CEO of Vaultree: $16 Million Raised to Build the World’s First Fully Functional Data-in-Use Encryption
Ben Levine
Senior Director of Product Management and Marketing of Axiado Corporation
Building Marketing Guidelines That Actually Stick Across Teams
Stijn Vande Casteele
Founder of Sweepatic
Stijn Vande Casteele, Founder of Sweepatic: $4.4 Million Raised to Build the Future of External Attack Surface Management
Aurelie Guerrieri
Chief Marketing & Alliances Officer of DataDome
Aurelie Guerrieri, Chief Marketing & Alliances Officer at DataDome: 20 Years in Silicon Valley – Insights on the Evolving Tech Landscape
Ken Bagnall
CEO & Founder of Silent Push
Ken Bagnall, CEO & Founder of Silent Push: $22 Million Raised to Transform Threat Intelligence Through Adversary Infrastructure Monitoring
Ian Amit
CEO and Founder of Gomboc
Ian Amit, CEO & Founder of Gomboc: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Security Remediation
Nadav Arbel
CEO & Co-Founder of Cyrebro
Nadav Arbel, CEO & Co-Founder of Cyrebro: $51 Million Raised to Build the Future of ML-Backed MDR
Mollie Breen
CEO and Co-Founder of Perygee
Mollie Breen, CEO and Co-Founder of Perygee: $6.4 Million Raised to Build the Future of IT/OT Security
Paul Valente
CEO and Co-Founder of VISO Trust
Paul Valente, CEO and Co-Founder of VISO Trust: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of Third-Party Cyber Risk Management
Danny Lopez
CEO of Glasswall
Danny Lopez CEO of Glasswall: $60+ Million Raised to Make the Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) Category Mainstream
Philippe Humeau
CEO of CrowdSec
Philippe Humeau, CEO of CrowdSec: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cyber Threat Intelligence
Sivan Tehila
Founder and CEO of Onyxia
Sivan Tehila, Founder and CEO of Onyxia: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cybersecurity Performance Management
Peter Dvorak
Founder & CEO of Wultra
How Wultra built category leadership as the only post-quantum provider for banking digital identity | Peter Dvorak
Diana Rabba
Head of Marketing of Exein
Long Game Marketing: Building Trust in High-Stakes B2B Sales
Paul Lewis
Founder and CEO of Calamu
Paul Lewis, CEO of Calamu: $20 Million Raised to Build the Cyber Storage Category
Neil Serebryany
CEO and Co-Founder of CalypsoAI
Neil Serebryany, CEO & Co-Founder of CalypsoAI: $38 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI Security
Dimitri Sirota
CEO & Co-Founder of BigID
Dimitri Sirota: The GTM Story of BigID ($1.25 Billion Valuation)
Julie Preiss
Chief Marketing Officer of Centripetal
Why Your Cybersecurity Brand Sounds Like Everyone Else