Code4rena Data-driven sales for a crowded audit market.
- COMPANY
- Code4rena, a competitive audit platform
- ROLE
- Sales and BD
- TEAM
- Triad sales team
- REGION
- APAC, with a focus on the India market
A strong brand in a crowded market, with a bear market stretching sales cycles and clients drifting to other firms.
From the start, we viewed Code4rena as a dominant player in the auditing sector, having audited numerous top-tier protocols. Our marketing and brand awareness were strong, but the competition in auditing was fierce. Traditional auditors like Consensys Diligence and Trail of Bits were well established, and other platforms like Sherlock were going after the same protocols.
The market made sales slower too. In the bear market, protocols became more cautious about audit budgets and some even delayed launches, which led to longer sales cycles as decision makers looked for cost-effective options. Retention wasn’t as good as it should be either, and some protocols we had audited switched to different firms.
And we were building regional mindshare from the ground up.
We sourced pipeline for our triad sales team through account research, data-driven outbound and upsell tracking. For outbound, we used signals like GitHub activity and funding triggers to find protocols that were likely to need an audit. That pipeline fed into $2.3M in GMV.
When we talked with protocols that had gone with traditional auditors, we took the narrative that those firms are great for consulting work and early codebase security, but to make the codebase as bulletproof as possible before launch, audit contests find way more critical bugs. That was our value proposition.
We also tried a consultative approach, becoming navigators instead of a team that just wanted to close the deal. We invested a lot of time in understanding each person we connected with, and those relationships ended up sending referrals our way.
We built regional mindshare from the ground up, with a focus on the India market.
We analysed client behavioural patterns, security posture and competitor audit models to improve follow-up predictability, refine our sales approach and feed platform strategy.
CLIENT BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS
Our ideal clients need security audits at specific intervals, like once every two or four quarters. So we lined up follow-ups with those cycles, reached out before their audit schedule and even asked clients to book audits in advance, to make follow-ups more predictable.
We also put together a retention and churn report on Code4rena’s public audits. Out of 69 projects, only 9 came back for another audit, a retention rate of 13.04%. Based on that, we recommended a post-audit feedback loop, regular retention touches with past clients, exit discussions with clients who didn’t return and using the data to spot upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
SECURITY POSTURE
We looked at each protocol’s security posture to refine our sales approach. Top protocols that are resilient to the bear market can afford multiple audits. Early-stage protocols are more risk-averse. They want to make the best of each penny in their audit budget, might only work with one auditor at the start and take much more convincing to convert.
COMPETITOR AUDIT MODELS
We analysed competitor audit models (open, invitational and hybrid) to feed into platform strategy. Alongside that, we shared client feedback with the team, covering findings curation, pricing and how much of the audit cost actually goes into finding bugs. We also wrote a breakdown of why warden activity might be declining, with ideas for keeping top wardens around.
We played a key role in launching the Bug Bounty Program by sourcing the first partner. We secured Dinero (acquired by Plume), which remained the program’s largest bounty until the program wound down.
We expanded into emerging ecosystems as net-new verticals for the company: StarkNet (Cairo), Aptos (Move) and Solana (Rust). On StarkNet, we sourced the first Cairo audit client and unlocked a Starknet Foundation partnership for subsidised audits for early-stage protocols.
We’d also written about this in our notes on C4’s sales, where we suggested ecosystem-level partnerships and expanding into chains like Aptos and Solana, since we had good relations with some of these ecosystems.
- 01 Retaining existing clients is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Building and maintaining solid relationships with clients and partners leads to more retention and sets the stage for word of mouth.
- 02 Clients need audits at specific intervals, so the sales approach and follow-ups should line up with those timelines.
- 03 Relationships with key decision makers matter even more in auditing sales, and leveraging existing ones for referrals and intros is just as important. Trust is invaluable.
- 04 Feedback from both clients and wardens is worth collecting regularly, because that data helps you make informed decisions later on.