How Trulioo CEO Steve Munford grew Trulioo to $150.6M revenue and 450 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is steve munford he has nearly two decades of executive leadership experience in the technology industry and currently serves as a ceo of truly used software a leader in digital identity previously he'll leadership and board positions with a number of public and private software companies in north america and europe he holds a ba in economics from the university of western ontario and an mba from queens university steve you're ready to take us from the top sure thing nathan all right digital identity is hot metaverse we have we have jumeo on blockchain we've got all these tools up traditional players like ping identity how do you fit into the space yeah so we are involved with the onboarding process so think about yourself if you're a neobank or an online trading platform and you're trying to onboard customers and comply with different regulations or build trust uh you need a digital identity service to do that and that's what we are and the thing that makes us unique is that we we do it not only here in canada the us but we do it across 195 countries which makes it hard and makes what we do quite special so when i just bought recently on my tesla and had to show them proof of insurance and ownership via the app one of the things they had me do was effectively go through a third party and verify my identity was like a face picture with some algorithm thing plus my a picture of my passport are you powering those sorts of things yeah yeah so uh you know so it could be a marketplace it could be a shop it could be a you know an online trading platform those are all use cases for us and uh you know typically we get involved with you know high high growth digital first disruptors that are expanding globally and and really power them and tell me about how you price right so are you charging like per identity verified per kyc filing like how do you verify her as a consumption base we we we do it based on per check so every time someone comes to do us comes to us with a check we charge a a a fee on that i see sort of like a flat p we're talking like five cents or something no no no this is uh this could be you know it could be in the sense it could be in the dollars depending on the country comparing the complexity because not only do we do individuals we also do companies so whether it's a large company or think about a sole proprietor signing up to do some kind of rideshare programming or assault proprietor going on to a platform to sell their their goods around their houses those are all kind of different you know different versions of the same workflow if you will just to steve simplify my questions can i assume for the average though is maybe around a dollar sometimes it's two dollars sometimes it's five cents yep yep that's good okay tell me about the back story here what got you into this uh well one is um it's a the founder who founded truly was based here in vancouver i knew some of the investors i got to know him over the years and really started with conversations about the next stage of growth for the company and you know he was considering a lot of options like many founders you know should i you know try to scale the business myself should i take on new investors should i sell the business and what was context how much had he raised and was he the sole founder he no there's two founders but he was the only founder still in the business um he had raised i don't have the exotic figures but think about in the tens and twenties millions of dollars and uh and the company at the time was doing i don't call it 20 or 30 million dollars and uh he was trying to decide whether to try to scale to the 100 plus million dollar company 2017. this is 20. i began the conversations with them about in 2017 2018 i took over running the uh the company back in early 2020. so along the way he decided that three year conversation steve that's a lot of patience uh yeah there's a lot of patience but um listen it was a great chance to get to know him get to know the business and uh to build a relationship and listen the conversation started with you know just one one guy trying to be helpful to an entrepreneur and it turned out to be you know it's a great fit you know the identity problem is huge the market um you can't ask for a bigger market more important mark than identity today it's a hard problem it hasn't been solved and the need for it as everything goes digital just increases so he had a desire to you know stay involved the company but pass off the baton to running the company we went about uh doing another round of financing then allowed to take some secondary to you know take a step back and you know pass it off to this new guy and and kind of take some money off the table and it's worked out really well so steve just to back up the story here because yeah i mean when you say you you're underselling a bit your most recent round i'll let you tell tell the story but what was the size of the most recent series d it was us dollars 394 million um 150 primary and the rest was secondary and just a lot of founders don't understand you can get liquidity for yourself early investors and early employees without ipo'ing or exiting 100 just quickly explain how a secondary works yeah and and actually just just full context that was a pre-money valuation 4.6 billion so um post post post two million post 2 billion basically well because 150 primary so post 1.75 us but i think this is really important point nathan i i i think um for a long time you know i don't think investors had a lot of appetite to give founders or ceos or early uh investors liquidity before they got their liquidity or before there was an ipo and i think that that was fundamentally misaligning um risk and and interest and and i would say for the last four or five founders i've worked with a key ingredient to them feeling comfortable to allow the company to take more risk to grow to go longer was the ability for them to take some secondary and take some chips off the tables to do risks because for most founders their chips are on one company and and whereas investors they spread across you know five or ten companies so the risk kind of appetite for an investor could be very different to a founder and i i think if you by allowing some liquidity along the way it's just um it's just there and it's good and and this you know liquidity event that we had jesus employees here that have been here six or seven years and were able to pay down mortgages or even pay off mortgages uh the founder was able to take some money off the table some very early investors angel investors were as well and quite frankly there was more appetite to buy shares and there were sellers of shares in this round and and i think that's you know looking across i think probably 40 or 50 employees that were able to get some kind of liquidity that's fantastic and and now they're they're still engaged they still got a they got a lot to play for but but they're able to kind of take some rewards along the way i think it's nice you guys are listening right now going well steve they have a lot of skill i mean they broke 25 million in revenue in 2017. well i don't have that much revenue yet i can't do a secondary i will tell you we're seeing secondaries very early i'm seeing series a companies take secondary so just because steve is much larger than maybe you guys are listening still take this advice on secondaries to heart if you're thinking about it you know seed or series a steve would you agree i completely agree because a lot of those same investors with good companies also could get complete liquidity they wanted there's a lot of m a appetite going out here so this is it's really just an option of hey some secondary i'm still going along and that's absolutely a conversation you can have if you're the right profile company and the risk the flip side to this the reason firms like tcp will do this uh steve i'm sure you are as well but you know i'm an investor in a bunch of vc funds and the vc funds get so bummed when founders sell too early because they want personal net worth whereas they would have stuck with the business if they could extract some personal wealth ahead of time and have a long-term horizon so that's what tcp is fighting against absolutely and it's not just a founder think about the founder generally has a family and that that that person's been working 24 hours a day the family's generally made a lot of sacrifices he's been building the company and at some point you need to come home and say hey we don't have a mortgage anymore or you know we we're going to be in good shape and i love my company to go longer but we've been able to toast celebrate a milestone along the way and it doesn't make the founder any less hungry it just actually means it has a longer time horizon i i think it's a really important ingredient to uh to building a company over the long term so just to sum that up 394 million total around 150 million went on the balance sheet of the business 244 million of it went to early employees early angel investors the founder liquidity it was a 1.7 post money evaluation and steve about what revenue run rate today uh so i think we're pretty public about this where we're approaching right around 100 million dollars u.s so that begs the question right why do a secondary...