5 Go-to-Market Lessons from Entrio’s Journey Selling to Financial Institutions

Creating an enterprise software company is challenging enough. Building one that sells to banks? That’s a different beast entirely. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Entrio founder Avi Cohen shared insights from their journey that reveal crucial lessons for enterprise software founders.

1. Look Below the Surface Problem Initial assumptions about customer problems often miss the mark. Entrio started by trying to help banks access external innovation, but discovered a deeper issue. “What we thought was the biggest problem above the water turned out to be a mistake,” Avi explains. “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 pivot to helping banks better utilize existing technology became their core value proposition.
2. Create Categories When Existing Ones Don’t Fit Rather than squeezing into established categories like SaaS management, Entrio created a new “tech adoption” category. This wasn’t just marketing – it stemmed from market reality. 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.” When existing categories capture only a fraction of your value, creating a new one might be the answer.
3. Design Your Product to Shorten Sales Cycles In financial services, “the average sales cycle is something like 24 months from the first meeting to the moment you sign a contract,” Avi shares. Entrio tackled this by minimizing what they needed 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.” This approach helped reduce sales cycles to 6-12 months.
4. Let Customers Keep Their Preferred UI Enterprise customers often resist new interfaces. When customers pushed back on Entrio’s web application, they pivoted to an API-first approach. “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,” Avi recalls. This flexibility accelerated adoption.
5. Adapt Your Value Proposition Across Market Segments While Entrio started with global banks, they’ve learned to tailor their message for different segments. “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 try to bring it into downstream potential customers,” Avi explains. The core problems remain similar, but the emphasis changes based on customer size and needs.

For founders targeting enterprise customers, especially in regulated industries, these lessons highlight a crucial truth: success often comes from adapting your approach to market realities rather than forcing customers to adapt to you. Whether that means creating new categories, pivoting your product delivery, or tailoring your message to different segments, the key is remaining flexible while solving real problems.

The enterprise software landscape is littered with failed startups that couldn’t navigate these challenges. Entrio’s journey shows that with the right approach to product, positioning, and go-to-market strategy, it’s possible to succeed even in the most demanding enterprise environments.