Inside Gated’s Viral Growth Engine: Building a Product That Silicon Valley Can’t Stop Talking About
When a sales rep encounters Gated for the first time, their reaction typically follows a predictable pattern. First comes frustration at the barrier between them and their prospect. Then curiosity leads them to make a small charitable donation. Finally, they experience dramatically higher response rates – and many become vocal advocates for the platform.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Gated founder Andy Mowat revealed how this experience-driven growth engine helped the company filter nearly 10 million messages monthly without traditional marketing spend.
The Viral Loop in Action
The growth engine starts with a memorable first touchpoint. “We have an inherently viral product that people know about,” Andy explains. “I go to a party in San Francisco around anything sales and marketing related and everyone’s like, ‘oh my God, that’s the tool, I know it or I’ve heard of it.'”
But awareness alone doesn’t drive adoption. The magic happens when users see the results: while typical “cold email reply rates than one to 2%,” messages that come through Gated see “reply rates are above 50%.”
Building Multi-Channel Growth
Rather than relying solely on product virality, Gated built multiple growth loops:
- Personal Outreach: “We have a Clearbit which will take a look at who has donated and it’ll tell me what’s their profile here’s, their link, how many followers do they have,” Andy explains. This allows for targeted relationship building with influential users.
- Advisory Network: “If you look at our LinkedIn, you’ll see there’s a ton of advisors of people that are very prominent, that are helping us out.” These relationships amplify Gated’s reach within key communities.
- Content Strategy: “I write all the time,” Andy shares. “I’ve written an entire six series handbook on rev ops. I’ve got one coming out around just all the go to market hacks that have worked for me.”
Mission-Driven Momentum
Gated’s growth transcends typical viral mechanics through its focus on mission. “What I said very early to my Co-Founder was not everyone will use the tool, but I want everybody to believe in the mission of what we’re trying to do,” Andy explains.
This mission-first approach helped Gated attract prominent supporters. “We had an investor that’s very prominent in sales and marketing, and that person said, you need to make this work for both sides.”
From Organic Growth to Category Creation
The viral growth engine gave Gated a strong foundation, but Andy recognized the need to think bigger. “If you thought it was easy before to send 100,000 emails… if you thought you were only suffering in email, you’re going to suffer on LinkedIn. All these other channels are just getting overloaded.”
This insight led to Gated’s evolution from email filtering to universal access control. Rather than simply blocking messages, the platform now helps users signal what conversations they’re open to having – creating a new category of attention management tools.
Lessons for Founders
Gated’s growth strategy offers several key insights for B2B founders:
- Build virality into the core product experience
- Create multiple, reinforcing growth loops
- Connect product benefits to a larger mission
- Use personal outreach to build relationships with power users
- Let organic growth inform product evolution
The key is maintaining focus on sustainable growth rather than shortcuts. As Andy notes about traditional demand generation: “I need to hire somebody that can generate demand right now. And I tend to take a step back and say, well, explain to me what your business is uniquely good at and let’s think of how you can have a unique approach.”
By building virality into their product experience and connecting it to a larger mission, Gated created organic growth that not only drove adoption but also informed their evolution into category creation.
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