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From Email Filtering to Universal Access Control: How Gated’s Founder Navigates Product Evolution
Ten million filtered messages per month would be a success metric worth celebrating for most founders. But for Andy Mowat, founder of Gated and former GTM leader at Box and Culture Amp, it wasn’t enough to fulfill his vision of fundamentally changing how people manage their attention.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Andy shared a masterclass in product evolution and go-to-market strategy, including the difficult decision to pivot from a successful email filtering product to build something with greater potential impact.
The journey started with a personal pain point. “I was just getting hammered by emails, so I hacked together Gated,” Andy explains. What emerged was an innovative solution that required senders to make small charitable donations to reach non-connected recipients.
The early signs were promising. “Everybody knows us. We have an inherently viral product that people know about,” Andy notes. “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 brand recognition and viral growth weren’t enough. Despite strong user satisfaction and clear product-market fit, Andy and his team made the difficult decision to evolve their strategy. “We asked users and they’re like, I’d pay for this thing. It’s great, it’s amazing. But I think we just realized it would be a smaller business that wouldn’t drive the impact.”
This decision exemplifies Andy’s approach to building companies: “You have to have intellectual honesty,” he emphasizes. “Holy crap, we build something that impacts tens of millions of people a month, but it still isn’t going to change the world in the way we needed to change it.”
The pivot reflects deeper insights about attention management in an AI-driven world. “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,” Andy explains. “All these other channels are just getting overloaded.”
Rather than simply filtering messages after they’re sent, Gated’s new platform aims to influence what conversations people initiate in the first place. The goal is to create what Andy calls a “universal gate” – a single intelligent system that users can adjust to control incoming communications across platforms.
This evolution required rethinking not just the product, but the entire go-to-market approach. Unlike many founders who rush to scale their teams after initial traction, Andy advocates for patience: “I think I would almost have held on longer on the staffing up to really understand, like, okay, is it just accelerating or is it hockey sticking?”
He sees similar rushed decisions in how companies approach demand generation: “People call me and say… 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 to demand gen.”
Andy’s experience scaling Culture Amp “from 4 million to 80 million in revenue in four years” taught him the importance of integrated go-to-market motions. Rather than treating functions like sales, marketing, and post-sale operations as silos, he advocates for a holistic approach that considers how these teams work together.
Most importantly, Andy emphasizes the power of mission over mechanics: “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.”
This focus on mission has helped Gated build strong advocacy and attract prominent advisors, creating organic growth through authentic connection rather than aggressive sales tactics. It’s a testament to Andy’s belief that sustainable growth comes from understanding what makes your business unique and building go-to-market strategies that amplify those strengths.
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