SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Trend.io Does $60k/mo Helping Brands Find MicroInfluencers
10 Sep 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Right now, we are about to hit 200 brands in the marketplace. Per month, it really depends. Some stay active monthly, some don't. So I would say about $1,000.
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Chapter 2: What is Trend.io and how does it help brands?
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Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Ramon Barrios. He's building a company called Trend.io and was born and raised in Puerto Rico and now is living in Denver, Colorado.
Ramon, you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, sir. Let's do it.
All right. What is Trend.io?
We help consumer brands connect with micro-influencers so they can scale user-generated content.
Okay, and so give me an idea here of the kinds of customers you're serving.
Yeah, so CPG, fashion, beauty, all these brands need to generate content for their paid advertising. User-generated content tends to convert really well. Studios are expensive and micro influencers happen to be great content generators, which make it affordable and scalable for these brands to produce content.
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Chapter 3: What types of customers does Trend.io serve?
They're all contractors. Okay. So we have three different contractors we work with. We have our web, we have our iOS, and then we have our
website as well so all of his contractors so three contracted engineers and then two i assume one of those two is you on marketing and sales and growth yeah that's me and then my partner designs the whole platform and manages the developers i see everything's been designed by him that's great have you raised additional capital last time we spoke i think you said you raised about 750 grand
We haven't raised since we last spoke.
Got it. So $750,000. You were burning at that point, I think, about $5,000 per month. And you were doing, I think you told me, something like $20,000 or $30,000 a month in revenue. Have you got to profitability today or at least break even?
No, we have not. We are burning right now... anywhere from 20 to 30. Uh, but what we notice is, uh, what we changed was that we, we moved the sales team. So now we know that once we pass the 150 K MRR, um, 150 K a month in transactions, uh, we don't really need to spend more from there. So it's, it hasn't been our focus right now.
So can I take 60 enterprise, like business accounts that have paid you about a grand over the past 30 days? So you're doing about 60,000 bucks in MRR currently. Yep. And so if you're investing and kind of burning about 20 grand a month right now today, I mean, what are you burning it on to get to $150,000 a month in revenue?
Well, we acquired all our customers through content marketing and email marketing. And, you know, as you know, content marketing is slow. So we're now trying to spend money to actually acquire customers through paid acquisition channels. And then the development of the platform is the rest goes to that.
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Chapter 4: How does Trend.io handle influencer attribution?
Where did you find your contractors? There's so many resources to find developer contractors, and there's varying degrees of quality.
Yeah. So one of them we actually met over here in Austin at Capital Factory, who manages a couple of developers in the Philippines who are great. The other guy who manages our iOS, who developed our initial iOS app, Mike, partner exchanged 500 hours of design with him in order to get our V1 for free. He said it was the worst decision. 500 hours? Yes. Oh my.
We got like an app that was like $100,000 for free, but he still says it's one of the worst decisions he's made.
I mean, yeah, it's like two-fifths of a year if you're working 40-hour weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. OK, talk to me about the content marketing strategy. So your big organic keywords right now are terms like macro influencers, most successful Shopify stores and this thing called Kohl's, which I have no idea what that is.
Yeah. So key opinion leaders that have taken off in China and now it's taken over here where it's like, hey, it's not just an influencer. It's actually someone who is entitled to give an opinion on this specific product because they're an expert of that matter.
Do they have to actually be an expert or they've just branded themselves as an expert? Like if it's a doctor, is it like a celebrity doctor like Dr. Phil or is it like a real doctor out of Harvard?
It could be like a real doctor out of Harvard who, you know, has the credibility to speak up on a product or something like that.
A lot of you guys will ping me out of the blue and asking for help selling your software companies, but I'm not a broker and I'm really focused on founder path right now, not helping folks sell their company. So I'm always looking for great tools to recommend for you guys to quickly figure out what you could potentially sell your company for and how much cash you could get.
That's where Flippa comes in. Now, here's my thing about brokerages, especially for selling your company. You guys should not have to pay a 10% brokerage fee when you put your blood, sweat, and tears into building your company for years out of a sale. All smart founders know, though, that the best way to maximize price is to have multiple options.
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Chapter 5: What is the pricing model for using Trend.io?
That's NathanLacke.com forward slash F-L-I-P-P-A. Okay. So it's more about credibility versus reach because very rarely are those two things the same today. There's a lot of people that have a lot of reach, but very little credibility. They're not actually a doctor. And there's a lot of very smart, good doctors that have no voice.
Correct. Exactly.
Well, so who are you appealing to though? The, the one with no audience, but a real doctor or the one that has a lot of audience because they can drive your brands, real new customers.
Yeah. So in that case, it would have to be the ones that have an audience. Um, to be able to drive customers. In our case, you know, we saw that there was a lot of opportunity in that keyword and we just went for it. But the Shopify one is the one that's crushing right now.
Interesting. Okay. And so, yeah, so that's a keyword that you're ranking for. And what is your content strategy look like right now? I mean, are you hiring someone full time? Is it agency based? How are you doing it?
Yeah. So we have a JNR team who manages our writers, who are contractors and subject matter experts who we have our keyword strategy and topics. And that changes dynamically where we just assign it to them. And somebody on our team is taking care of making sure that all that content is keyword optimized. And then we publish weekly along with our podcast, which is now
ranked in pretty high in the DTC category. So that is starting to do really well. And yeah, that's our content strategy.
Was Kevin Lovell and Mizzen and Main one of your guys' customers? Or did you get this case study just based off you analyzing their stuff?
Oh, no, they were one of our customers. So we worked with Mizzen and Main. They published content. They generated content on Trend. And then they were running that content on paid advertising.
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Chapter 6: How does Trend.io support customer reactivation?
Okay, cool, man. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Principles by Ray Dalio.
Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Well, a chairman I'm following right now is Charlie Munger. I've been reading a lot of his stuff lately.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Favorite tool, ActiveCampaign.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Seven to eight.
That's good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
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