The Banzuke
The banzuke — the ranking sheet. Cyber go-to-market graded the way nobody else grades it: on the motion, not the product. Leagues hold divisions; divisions hold weight classes; weight classes hold belts. The belt is never for sale.
The Forge
CATEGORY BUILDERSFighters inventing a new style — companies building a category, not competing in one. Graded on whether they can make the category real, not on beating an established field. Graduate into the division they create.
The Challenger's Gate
Think your motion deserves a ranking? Vendors will be able to step into the Kumite and submit to be scouted. The grade is earned, never bought — the belt is not for sale.
How the belt is earned.
Kumite grades one thing: go-to-market. Funding, headcount, and capital type are context — they tell you who's in the ring. They do not determine the belt. The belt is earned across seven GTM dimensions, every one of them read from outside-in signals anyone can observe. No vendor fills out a form; no private number ever touches a grade. A fighter is placed on two axes — the weight class it fights at, and the belt it has earned.
Weight classes hold belts. The belt is never for sale.
Market gravity: revenue band, footprint, and share of category attention. It sets who you're measured against. Scale is a bracket, not a verdict — a giant can be graded poorly, a specialist can be graded flawlessly.
Earned across seven GTM dimensions, white to black. A featherweight can hold a black belt; a heavyweight can hold a white one. Capital buys scale. It does not buy a belt.
Stripes mark momentum inside a belt — measurable progress toward the next rank, not a rank of their own. A brown belt with stripes is climbing; the belt only changes when the motion does.
The seven dimensions resolve into a belt — the summary rank — and a one-paragraph read, the judgment behind it. The belt tells you where a fighter stands; the Verdict tells you why, and what would move it.
Verdicts grade the motion, not the money. A nine-figure raise that ends in a discount sale is a weak motion that was well-funded — and it grades as one. The arena rewards the go-to-market, every time.
- Metrics: CybersecTools + Return on Security (free tier) + public signals — cited.
- Grades, belts & verdict: the GTM Exposure Index — ours, illustrative. Alliance & M&A dimensions pending the RoS Pro read.
- The read: our interpretation through the Venture in Security lens (Ross Haleliuk). His framework, our words — every verdict is ours, never his.
No private data ever enters a grade. Kumite reads what the market can see; what your next quarter should look like is OpptyCon's job, gated and behind the wall. That separation is the point — it's what makes a grade worth trusting.
Grades, belts & verdict: graded on the GTM Exposure Index — ours · illustrative · alliance & M&A dims pending RoS Pro
GTM read: our interpretation through the Venture in Security lens (Ross Haleliuk) · his framework, our words