SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
TrustMary: Transition from $2m Agency to $200k SaaS
02 Jun 2020
Chapter 1: What is the background of TrustMary and its founder?
We have been profitable from the beginning and all the money we have been basically making, we have been investing our future. So currently it's software where we are investing most. We are planning that whenever we are finding the product market fit our needs, with our software. And then we find our go-to-market fit as well.
So probably when we are starting to scale up faster, then we are interested to get some external funding for us as well.
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We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Bean before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
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My guest today is Artu Hajo. He is always curious to learn new things, sharing them with his wife and two boys, customers and business partners. He's hooked with so many hobbies that 48 hours per day wouldn't be enough. So to limit, he includes golf, ice hockey, fishing, and every now and then other ballgames. Amidst all that, he's building a tool to help improve conversions with social proof.
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Chapter 2: How does TrustMary improve website conversions?
That's our main goal for this year to really nail the product market fit. And yeah, So yeah, that's learning by doing.
You mentioned you had 10 sales reps that are kind of cold calling customers. But if your software product is a $90 a month product, how can you afford to pay sales reps to go close deals that are so small?
Currently, it's $390 what we provide for the monthly plan.
Okay.
But we just talked about earlier, you have 200 customers and about $200,000 in ARR, which means it's about $100 a month.
Yeah, they were selling videos at the same time as well. So the video was our main thing, what they sold until COVID crisis, pretty much. So... So that's how they were selling videos. And then with some of the customers, if they didn't want the video, then they just tried to make deal with the software plan. But it was kind of the hybrid. They were selling both.
What commission do you pay the sales reps?
I would say it's... It's... We have kind of the base salary, but then I think it's like 20% what we pay for them.
So if I'm a sales rep for you and I close someone on a $400 a year contract today, you'll pay me 20% of the $400, so about $80?
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Chapter 3: What is the pricing structure for TrustMary's software?
Do you have any plans to raise capital or do you want to stay bootstrapped?
We are planning that whenever we are finding the product market fit with our software, and then we find our go-to-market fit as well. So probably when we are starting to scale up faster, then we are interested to get some external funding for us as well.
How much would you want to raise?
I don't have any idea for that yet, but we are in good shape with funding for another year or something like that. So we will see that later.
Have you found ways that you can grow faster? I mean, it sounds like you're still trying to figure this out.
Yeah.
yeah, I didn't have like, uh, like R2, you must be running experiments right now to figure out how to sell more of this software product. What are, which experiment are you most excited about?
Currently, um, kind of trying to utilize, um, uh, our, like we have big network of customers already. So how, how can we utilize that? And how can we, because we, we have been able to deliver through our history, like, uh,
above what we have been promising to our customers so we have had always really high nps net promoter score so then we i i i'm very excited to find a ways how we can utilize that so get those referrals from our current customers and try to build some kind of viral effect but um yeah that's Still experimenting all of that and not any clear solution for how to do it.
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Chapter 4: How did TrustMary transition from a video testimonial business to software?
And, uh, let's say that's seven and
seven and a half seven and a half very good and what's your situation married single kids married with uh two active boys two kiddos all right and how old are you how old are you am i i'm 33 33 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew 20 year old uh i would say kind of uh
The networks you can create on that age at schools, everywhere you are, those are actually really worth building. So just to make the best you can on that age as well.
Trustmary.com, 208 customers on their software product paying $90 a month. So about 200,000 bucks in ARR. That's on top of their video testimonial business, which did about 2.3 million. So the company doing about 2.5 million in revenue today. They're totally bootstrapped.
30 people on the team, two engineers, 10 quota carrying sales reps as they look to scale and sell more of their higher margin, more predictable software product that helps you increase your website conversions. R2, thank you for taking us to the top.
Thank you very much, Nathan. I would like to do the same to your website as well. So to see how we can improve your conversions. We'll talk about it. Okay.
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