Cybersecurity Traction Slides: 5 Real Pitch Deck Examples
How security startups show traction: a paid-customer count, customers with analyst ratings, proofs of concept with a bank and a telecom.
Cybersecurity Traction Slides: Real Pitch Deck Examples
Five traction slides from security decks (a developer tunnelling service, a network access control vendor, an identity startup, a cloud security platform and an open-source threat-sharing company), shown in full. Security buyers are cautious, so investors look for paying customers and proof that large organisations trust the product. The stronger slides count paying customers; the weaker ones rely on logos, trials or future targets.
TL;DR
A cybersecurity traction slide should count paying customers and show who trusts the product. ngrok states 30,000 paid customers, with its ARR figure left blank in the shared deck. Portnox gives nearly 1,000 customers beside a Gartner Peer Insights rating and SOC 2 Type 2. Loqr lists 1,000 organic users, one pre-revenue client and two proofs of concept. DivvyCloud shows twelve enterprise logos and an unattributed quote. CrowdSec shows user and turnover targets for 2021 to 2024, a plan rather than results, the weakest example here.
Cybersecurity traction slides
Each example shows the exact stored slide above its analysis and links to the full teardown. Stronger examples first. Claims and figures are as shown on the slides; we have not verified them.
ngrok traction slide — slide 4
Series A (recorded). Secure tunnels and ingress for developers. Two large figures split by a line.
ngrok deck, slide 4. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: The strongest single number here because it counts payers, but without ARR or a time axis the size of each customer is unknown.
Evidence and limitation: One paid-customer count; the ARR amount is blank in the shared version; no dates or growth.
What a founder can adapt: Keep the paid-customer headline and add ARR and the same figures a year earlier; if you must hide ARR in a shared deck, say so.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Why you should be excited." "30,000 paid customers." "$ million ARR", with the number left blank.
Presentation choice: A large paid base shows developers buy without a sales team, which security investors look for in bottom-up products.
When it does not fit: A blank figure with no note; readers may assume it is small.
Series A (recorded). Network access control. Five facts on the left, three panels on the right.
Portnox deck, slide 3. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: Good trust evidence for a security buyer, but after years of operation the slide gives no sense of growth.
Evidence and limitation: A customer count with third-party ratings, a compliance badge and analyst quotes; no revenue, growth or customer sizes.
What a founder can adapt: Add customers and revenue by year, and say how many reviews stand behind the rating.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "About Portnox." "Founded in 2007", "50+ employees", "Nearly 1,000 customers", "Offices in US, UK & Israel", "VC-backed". Panels: "Trusted" with a Gartner Peer Insights rating of 4.7; "Secure" with a SOC 2 Type 2 badge; "Recognized" with quotes from Gartner, 451 Research and Frost & Sullivan.
Presentation choice: Analyst ratings and SOC 2 answer the question security buyers ask first: can we trust this vendor.
When it does not fit: Company facts (founding year, offices) taking the same space as customers.
Stage not recorded. Identity and authentication, Portugal, deck dated January 2016. Seven text lines.
Loqr deck, slide 6. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: Honest about being pre-revenue. The bank and telecom client counts describe the prospects, not Loqr's reach.
Evidence and limitation: Users, one unpaid client, two proofs of concept with large firms' client bases, a patent and an award; no revenue.
What a founder can adapt: State each proof of concept's dates, success measure and conversion terms, and show the prospect size as context, not traction.
Presentation choice: Proofs of concept with a bank and a telecom are meaningful for an identity product, but investors want to know what happens after the demo.
When it does not fit: "1 / 2 partner(s)": give the exact number.
Series B (recorded). Cloud security and compliance. A headline panel beside a quote and twelve logos.
DivvyCloud deck, slide 5. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: Impressive names, but the quote is unattributed and nothing shows how much each customer pays or how many there are.
Evidence and limitation: Twelve large logos and one quote with no speaker or company; no customer count, revenue or contract sizes.
What a founder can adapt: Attribute the quote, add the total customer count and ARR, and mark which logos expanded after the first purchase.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Customers Love and Trust DivvyCloud." ""DivvyCloud has been the most successful security product roll-out in our history."" Logos: Nike, Fidelity Investments, First Data, Kroger, 3M, CoStar Group, Pizza Hut, General Electric, Twilio, Discovery, Fannie Mae, Autodesk.
Presentation choice: Included for contrast: logos show reach into large enterprises but not the size or growth of the business.
When it does not fit: An anonymous quote as the main evidence.
Whether each slide counts paying customers, gives revenue, shows trust signals and separates results from plans.
Example
Product
Paying customers
Revenue
Trust signals
Results or plan
ngrok
Developer tunnels
30,000
Left blank
No
Results
Portnox
Network access control
Nearly 1,000
No
Rating, SOC 2, analysts
Results
Loqr
Identity
None (1 pre-revenue client)
No
Patent, award
Results
DivvyCloud
Cloud security
Not counted
No
12 logos, unattributed quote
Results
CrowdSec
Threat sharing
Not shown
Targets only
No
Plan
Key Takeaways
Lead with paying customers, not users or trials.
Say which logos are paying customers and since when.
Mark proofs of concept as unpaid until they convert.
Keep targets on a separate slide from results.
Build your cybersecurity traction slide
Count paying customers, show revenue over time and add the trust evidence security buyers check.
Payers. Paying customers today and a year ago.
Revenue. ARR by quarter, or a note that it is withheld in this version.
Trust. Compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001), rated reviews with their count, named references.
Pilots. Proofs of concept: with whom, since when, and what converts them.
Copyable framework: [n] paying customers, up from [n] a year ago; ARR [amount]. [certification]; rated [score] from [n] reviews. [n] proofs of concept with [customer type], converting on [terms].
Illustrative example 1 — written by us
Before: Customers Love and Trust DivvyCloud. "DivvyCloud has been the most successful security product roll-out in our history."
After: [n] enterprise customers including Nike, 3M and GE; ARR [amount], up [n]% year on year. "Most successful security roll-out in our history" — [title], [company].
What improved: Our illustrative rewrite; not DivvyCloud's wording. Bracketed parts are placeholders to fill with real facts. It adds a count and revenue, and attributes the quote.
What this guide adds
The library has cybersecurity problem, solution and product guides but no cybersecurity traction guide. This page looks at how security companies show buyers are paying and trusting them.
Sector labels come from the sector recorded for each published teardown (high confidence for Portnox, Loqr and CrowdSec; medium for ngrok and DivvyCloud). None of these five slides appears in another guide; the product guide uses a different ngrok slide, and the competition guide cites a different Portnox slide.
Three ways security decks show traction
Paying customer counts (ngrok, Portnox): one clear number, with trust signals beside it.
Trials and proofs of concept (Loqr): early buyers testing the product, with their size.
Logos and plans (DivvyCloud, CrowdSec): recognisable names or future targets, with no count of what has been paid.
Common mistakes
Logos without a count. Give the total customer number beside any logo wall.
Unattributed quotes. Name the person's role and company, or leave the quote out.
Prospect size as reach. A bank's client base is not your user base.
Targets on the traction slide. Label plans clearly or move them to financials.
Diagnostic checklist
Paying customers counted.
Revenue shown or its absence explained.
Trust evidence named and sourced.
Results separated from plans.
Frequently asked questions
How we chose these examples
Corpus: published pitch deck teardowns on StartupFundraising.com. Founder-uploaded private decks are excluded.
Selection (2026-09-27): we took teardowns whose recorded sector is cybersecurity, with a stored slide image and slide text about traction, customers, users, revenue, pilots or growth. We read the candidates and viewed six slide images, left out listed-company decks (KnowBe4, Ixia), problem, solution, team and market slides, slides already used in other guides and a slide with no stored image (MetaCert), and kept five. DivvyCloud and CrowdSec are included as weaker examples for contrast. Mobility and hardware were considered; they had too few startup slides showing the company's own traction.
Sector is the category recorded for each teardown (confidence given in the section above). Stages as recorded: ngrok and Portnox, Series A; DivvyCloud, Series B; CrowdSec, seed; Loqr, not recorded.
Review: stored slide images were checked on 2026-09-27 and matched to company, deck and slide number, and quoted text was read from the images (editorial model review). No person has yet completed an editorial review of this page.
Claims and figures are as shown on the slides; we have not verified them. We make no claim that any slide caused a fundraising outcome.
