How Trend CEO Ramon Berrios grew to $16.5M revenue and 60 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is ramon barrios he was born and raised in puerto rico previous owner of socially rich and then took up to 50 000 bucks in mrr when he moved to austin socially rich got shut down by facebook and then he built trend.io within that same year that's what he's focused on now ramon are you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right yeah so you're in a tough space building on the back of a whale like facebook can be good and bad it ate your first business it sound like so what happened was socially rich did it just slowly lose all the revenue or did you sell it off or what yeah we actually lost all the revenue um we figured it was a lot to do there with those clients we had about 5 000 contact information of people that we serve free trials to and customers about 500 active subscriptions or so so there was something to do there but us the time being socially rich i actually became an influencer myself and um i was able to work with agencies small businesses and got to understand the space and notice uh the pain there was in acquiring content and working with influencers uh so so we knew there was some damage to do there so we just decided to move on and focus on something else okay so you basically kind of just shut it down so how'd you get up with the idea with the trend yeah so when working with um influencers we noticed that when we were looking at all these other platforms there was sort of like a database where you would search and find influencers but tricky part is that that is not even a quarter of the whole process of getting to work with influencers searching for them is only the beginning and uh the biggest challenge when using these platforms is that it's kind of odd how the influencers get to propose whatever they want to get paid for a post uh in this so new so we just decided to build a platform where influencers would just get paid with free product uh and there was no platform really that would work like this so we turned the table and built a marketplace where a brand creates a listing and we have a vetted network of influencers so it's invite only um and everyone has to get approved everyone has to make world-class content to be on trend so that's essentially how it works interesting and is it a pure play sas model or is your churn so high it's not really recurring revenue so we've been selling for about five months now and uh this month actually was our first two churn clients uh so we've been months to months so far we had zero percent churn um and then uh this month we actually lost our first two clients okay and how many clients total do you have so right now we have about 20. 20. okay so 220 that's a 10 monthly churn something like that yeah interesting uh and you just launched the company right in 2017 last year yeah last year we used to be free to build up the marketplace um the chicken and the egg problem of course built a sustainable marketplace and uh we actually tried to upsell to those clients and that was such a pain uh we just said let's just invite new clients in and make it seem like this was always um like this and and it worked that's interesting okay so marketplace model 20 customers today on average what are customers paying you per month for this anywhere from for so we've been testing pricing we've only been doing the pricing model for five months so anywhere from a thousand to twenty five hundred a month okay so you're doing north of 20 grand a month right now yes okay that's great um how far north like what are you actually doing per month so we are about 25 right now okay that's great so 25 25 grand a month uh again across uh you said 20 customers yeah so a little north of a grand a month obviously there um and then a year ago so we can calculate growth rate you were i imagine nothing right now a year ago it was nothing about five months ago we got our first client so we've been over 40 percent month over month and then our healthiest month was october to november where we grew 138 that's better that's it now all fairness going from you know five dollars to you know fifty dollars is huge huge huge growth numbers percentage-wise but obviously you're getting you're building though you're building though i love it you gotta you gotta you can't bury the lead it's a good growth number um have you raised capital or are you bootstrapped yeah so we did about a year ago 250 from friends and family and uh we have about 500 notes um okay so about 750 raised to date was the 250 from friends and family equity or was that a note as well it was a note okay so two notes right now that's great and um i imagine you're probably burning capital as you look to build or are you casual positive today so we are about break even um we are adding on and then we catch up catch up to the burn fairly fast i come from socially rich was a completely bootstrap business so uh this is completely new to me um on on how to make the capital the most efficient um i mean there's obviously a diminishing return i wish to add more sales people and all that but um we have to think more about product uh so yeah we're we're about um break even right now that's great now when you say about breakeven i mean how close are you burning like a grand a month two grand a month we're burning around 25 to 30 and we're in 25 mrr sorry your your total spend is about 30 grand in monthly recurring revenue you're making 25 so you're burning about up to in a bad month five grand a month yeah i see i see good yeah i mean that's obviously you have plenty of runway if you have 750 raised yeah that's great what's the team size today so about five five people all in austin all in all um all in all yeah that's cool we are looking to hire one more by the beginning of january uh focus on product interesting walk me through the team you have in austin so so what do they do yeah absolutely so we have uh given that we are two-sided marketplace we have to grow the brand side in the influencer side so we have to do marketing on both sides um and and one doesn't live without the other um so survive without the other so uh we have a brand manager who makes sure that all the brands and all the campaigns are flowing efficiently every day we just hire an influencer growth focused um manager so this person is in charge of scaling and growing our influencer community and then an influencer engagement uh so this person is in charge of keeping the influencer community engaged uh myself and then we have a sales uh sdr well what about code who's developing oh yeah that's a good question so uh we have a remote uh developer uh agency um that that works with us who do you use for the yeah which agency yeah ironforge ironforge where are they based they are based in ohio i believe and you like them i care you like them our guy is in san diego but the agency itself i'm not sure got it are you are you enjoying them either doing good work oh my god yeah that's awesome yeah we have uh ian han who is our ios developer he's developed over 20 native ios apps he's absolutely world class and um wait why do you need an ios app for this for a marketplace yeah it is an ios app why though why do you need an ios app for for this so all influencers are on their phone all the time yeah so um if if if we build the desktop version for starting off it's not the best way to gain traction and have usage on the app i mean there's a lot in the process that goes behind the scenes such as influencers have a busy schedule so the brands have to ship out products to the influencers um and then just just alone tracking the product influencers can schedule the posts accordingly on their calendar they need to know where that product is at all times so we are integrated with usps fedex and ups um and all this is tracked through the app messaging with the influencers just coordinating that posting schedule um is why we built it on ios app and now our next step is to build a desktop version for the brands interesting what is the uh i'm going through your your example page right now just looking at some of these clients walking through the marketplace how many brands have put at least a dollar through you and how many influencers have made at least a dollar since you launched yeah so we have around 1600 influencers are active on the network they've all made at least a dollar they have made at least a dollar i would say probably around 300 of those um have made at least a dollar and we've had 3 000 campaigns created so 3 000 influencers have created post through trend um clients that have paid us are about 25 so far and some of those are some of those companies are lyft um lyft and austin created a campaign with us uh based focus on ut students um we also worked with uh we work with some of my cuban portfolio companies we work with health warrior for uh and some of the larger yeah kombuta has been one of our most successful um clients who had about one and a half impressions and one a million and a half impressions and total spend through your platform so add up all the campaigns you've driven or that you've been directly coordinating how much spend has gone through you so oh okay that's a good question so we're very different than your traditional influencer marketing platform our influencers work in exchange for free product so they don't pay the influencer there's no back and forth negotiating you pay us a fixed sas rate monthly and we take care of paying the influencer a commission fee um as we're integrated with paypal in the environment what's the commitment what's the what's the commission fee based off though so they get free product and 20 of the amount of influencers that you sign up for so if you go on our website you'll see our pricing you get two thousand for two thousand dollars you get to work with up to 20 influencers okay yes keep going yeah and they get free product and we pay 20 to the influencer of that 2 000 so they get 25 in free product so just just to be clear if a brand if lyft in austin signs up with you for 2 000 a month and you go find 20 influencers you're going to take 20 percent of 2000 right which is 400 and you're going to divide that across 20 of the influencers who posted is that right no it's actually 700 that we divide across the 20 influencers okay so 700 go ahead yeah so it's 700 and we paid 25 dollars to each influencer okay 700 divided by those 20 influencers would be 35 bucks a piece right it varies um it varies sometimes if they don't complete it's up to 20 influencers so if you didn't reach to your 20 influencers within that month um then it varies how much percentage of the two thousand dollars it is but it's a 25 flat rate fee to the influencer okay but they're not actually getting cash you're essentially going and buying kombucha shipping them kombucha and saying take a picture with this yes and then we pay them cash 25 oh you do still pay them cash we pay them cash yeah twenty five dollars okay so then we have a higher fear of vip influencers those who get a hundred dollars okay so you have paid 300 influencers at least like one payment of 25 bucks yeah interesting interesting um biggest influence on your platform is who um television of nomads uh does create a great amount of content for us and go first yourself are the ones that really stand out sorry who has the most follower the most instagram followers oh god show okay um around 100 000 followers it's probably the most in our platform this is a micro influencer platform you know by the way micro influencer i mean it's hot there's a lot of people realizing you can have someone with a thousand followers but they're very influential and you pay them and you drive four sales it works yeah in fact lyft when focused with uh some of the larger brands that are working with us are working with influencers that have around 2 500 followers yeah that's interesting that's interesting yeah okay good and and i'm actually shocked about this too so like mostly these these are usually campaigns like lyft starts the campaign during the school year and they stop when students aren't in austin anymore because they're going back home but your churn is very well was very low you just lost two customers i mean my gut tells me you're gonna have a lot of churn problems because this is so campaign driven how do you get people to keep using you even when they're not actively running a campaign yeah that's a great question so besides actually getting influencers to post on instagram one of the biggest value adds from trend is the user generated content so given that we are an invite only network um the the quality of the content you get doesn't go anywhere and you can you actually use that content and repurpose it for your ad spend or for print advertising or whatever it is or any marketing collateral and uh we actually have have been able to prove that the content created through trend will actually increase the conversion rate of your ad spend and you're always going to be running ad campaigns so at the very least um you'll have great content that you can repurpose uh however you should oh people talking about your product and i like i always say if it's worth doing once it's worth doing um over and over so we we we try to ingrain that onto our customers alright we're out of time quick questions here famous five number one what's your favorite business book deep work deep work yes number two is there a ceo you're following or studying not really but um i'm always impressed by jeff bezos number three what's your favorite online tool um asana number four how many hours of sleep to get every night eight or nine and what's your situation married single kids single okay no kiddos running around no all right and how old are you 26 26 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew so new um you don't need a college degree to be a somebody guys you don't need a college degree to be a somebody he got burned by facebook on his last company after growing it to 50 000 bucks a month shut it down launch trend.io now he's up to 20 customers paying 1200 bucks a month about 25 grand a month in revenue again about six months into the company they raised 750 grand in convertible notes they're burning about five thousand dollars per month right now team of five in austin about ten percent monthly churn as he's helping influencers uh or micro influencers partner with brands that are looking for those same target audiences ramon thank you for taking us to the top thank you nathan