Founder Interview
How Trustmary Bootstrapped to €2.5M Revenue and Nearly 200 Software Customers (Interview with Arttu Haho)
- Interviewee
- Arttu HahoCo-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Total Revenue (2019)
€2.5M
Software Customers (by logo) (2020)
Almost 200
Software ARR (2020)
€208K
Team Size (2020)
About 30
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Arttu Haho during the interview at the time of recording and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Trustmary’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Trustmary started in June 2016 as a video testimonial project business and was building a software business alongside it
- 02Total revenue across video and software was €2.5M in 2019
- 03The software product launched roughly one year before the interview and began selling separately in October or November 2019
- 04Almost 200 customers were paying for the software product, which had €208K in ARR at the time of the interview
- 05The full software plan was priced at $390 per month in USD
- 06Nearly all software customers signed up on annual plans, as monthly plans launched only two weeks before the interview
- 07The company had around 30 full-time people, including around 10 in sales and 2 engineers
- 08Trustmary had been profitable from the beginning, investing everything it made back into the business
- 09Cold calls by sales reps were the most common way Trustmary found software customers
- 10Arttu stated the company would need to find product-market fit before seeking external funding
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue, Video and Software Combined (2019) | €2.5M | Founder interview |
| Software ARR (2020) | €208K | Founder interview |
| Software Customers (by logo) (2020) | Almost 200 | Founder interview |
| Full Plan Price (2020) | $390/month | Founder interview |
| Team Size (2020) | About 30 | Founder interview |
| Engineers (2020) | 2 | Founder interview |
| Sales Reps (2020) | About 10 | Founder interview |
| Year Founded | 2016 | Founder interview |
| Video Testimonial Projects Completed (2020) | Almost 4,000 | Founder interview |
| Companies Served (video testimonial) (2020) | 1,500 | Founder interview |
| Sales Commission on Video and Bundled Deals (2020) | About 20% (plus base salary) | Founder interview |
| Video Testimonial Price (2020) | 5,000 per video (currency not stated) | Founder interview |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Trustmary generated €2.5M in total revenue in 2019, combining its video testimonial project business and its early software product. The software, sold separately only since October or November 2019, had €208K in ARR at the time of the interview. Arttu said the video business had been decreasing a little during the COVID crisis while the software was taking nice steps forward.
Customers
Almost 200 customers were paying for the software product at the time of the interview. The company had also served 1,500 companies through its video testimonial service over its history, completing nearly 4,000 video testimonial projects.
Team
Trustmary had approximately 30 full-time team members, with around 10 focused on sales and only 2 writing code. Seven people in total were focused on the software side of the business at the time of the interview.
Profitability and Funding
The company had been profitable since its founding in 2016, using revenue from the video testimonial business to fund software development. Arttu described targeting a near-zero margin by reinvesting all profits, and stated the company was in good shape financially for another year or so without external funding.
Growth Strategy
Cold Outreach via Sales Reps
The primary growth channel for the software product was a team of around 10 quota-carrying sales reps making cold calls, booking meetings, and closing deals. Previously these reps sold video testimonial packages, and they began shifting focus toward software during the COVID-19 period.
Bundling Software with Video Testimonial Projects
Trustmary initially grew its software customer base by bundling the software with existing video testimonial clients, giving the product an early base of real users before it was sold as a standalone offering.
Narrowing Focus Before Scaling Marketing Again
Nathan noted from Ahrefs that Trustmary had no paid ads running and that its organic traffic had grown since the start of the year as it began ranking for terms like NPS. Arttu said the company had scaled back its sales and marketing push for about three months, from February to April, while narrowing a software approach that had been too generic, and was starting to scale marketing up again.
Experimenting with Referrals from Existing Customers
Arttu expressed excitement about utilizing Trustmary's large existing customer base and historically high Net Promoter Score to generate referrals and try to build some kind of viral effect, though he said it was still an experiment with no clear solution yet.
Geographic Expansion to the US
Arttu had just moved with his family to the United States to ramp up the business there. He said Trustmary's approach had been too generic to reach US customers, and that nailing product-market fit was the company's main goal for the year.
Best Quotes
“So we started actually as a project business four years ago, and this software track is very new to us. And we... In some point, we bundled our video testimonial projects with our software as well. So... But, yeah, currently, if you pay three ninety in USD per month, then you can get kind of the full plan.”
“the initial idea was to provide the easiest way to produce authentic customer testimonial videos. That's still what we do as an additional service to our software clients, because we know how to do it. We have done it more almost 4,000 times already with 1,500 companies. So that's how we started and that's how basically we have funded our software initiative. So we are bootstrapped to this point.”
“It's not that simple since we, in the beginning, we sold it only with the annual plan. So actually, our ARR at the moment is 208,000 in euro.”
“when you are doing a project business, we bootstrap that from 0 to 2,500,000 in Euro per year. And it's very like every year you start from zero because you need to sell everything you are going to do on that year. So maybe kind of, we didn't like the business model.”
“Yeah, 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 have been aiming for kind of the zero margin for... Until this point. So trying to invest all all the money we make to our future.”
“I would say kind of the networks you can create on that age at schools, everywhere you are, those are actually really worth building.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview, Trustmary was a bootstrapped company of around 30 people moving from a video testimonial project business toward software, with €208K in software ARR from almost 200 customers and a monthly plan launched two weeks earlier. Arttu Haho had just moved with his family to the United States to ramp up the business there, and the company was still working to find product-market fit. Visit the Trustmary company profile on GetLatka for current figures and any updates since this recording.
View Trustmary’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:28What Trustmary Does and How It Compares to Competitors
- 1:06Pricing and Business Model
- 1:50Origin Story: From Video Testimonials to Software
- 3:07Software Customer Count and ARR
- 5:27Why Trustmary Got into Software and Last Year's Total Revenue
- 6:33Team Size, Engineers, and Sales Reps
- 7:55Churn, Annual Plans, and Monthly Plan Launch
- 8:36Customer Acquisition and CAC
- 11:08Sales Rep Commissions and Hybrid Selling Model
- 13:40Profitability and Reinvestment Strategy
- 14:09Fundraising Plans
- 16:02A Hypothetical Buyout and the Software's Potential
- 17:12Famous Five Rapid Fire
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Arttu Haho. He is always curious to learn new things, sharing them with his wife and two boys, customers and business partner. He's hooked with so many hobbies at forty eight hours per day wouldn't be enough. So to limit, he includes golf, ice hockey, fishing, and every now and then other ball games. Amidst all that, he's building a tool to help improve conversions with social proof. The company is called trustmary.com. Arttu,
00:25you ready to take us to the top?
Arttu Haho
00:27Yes, I am.
What Trustmary Does and How It Compares to Competitors
Nathan Latka
00:28Okay. Tell us about this tool. I think my audience is familiar with tools like UseProof or GetProof and Fomo and these kinds of tools. Where do you fall?
Arttu Haho
00:38Yeah. So whenever somebody, for example, you have reviews, you have satisfied customers, so then we provide these tools for you to to really solve them at your website and improve conversions.
Nathan Latka
00:50Okay.
Arttu Haho
00:51So that's basically what we do.
Nathan Latka
00:52And just for the audience listening, it's essentially a pop up in the bottom right of the screen that says, you know, James just entered his email to try Trustmary or Samantha just purchased Trustmary, things like that.
Arttu Haho
01:02Yeah. Yeah. That's one way of what we can provide.
Pricing and Business Model
Nathan Latka
01:06And how do you bill for it? So what does the average customer pay per month?
Arttu Haho
01:11Currently, kind of our annual average contract value is more than €1,000 per month, but that's kind of the messy data we have currently. It's because of our story. So we started actually as a project business four years ago, and this software track is very new to us. And we... In some point, we bundled our video testimonial projects with our software as well. So... But, yeah, currently, if you pay three ninety in USD per month, then you
01:46can get kind of the full plan.
Origin Story: From Video Testimonials to Software
Nathan Latka
01:50Okay. And so let's get more of this backstory. So you said this started off as a video testimonial business four years ago?
Arttu Haho
01:57Yeah, that's how we started 2016 in June. So the initial idea was to provide the easiest way to produce authentic customer testimonial videos. That's still what we do as an additional service to our software clients, because we know how to do it. We have done it more almost 4,000 times already with 1,500 companies. So that's how we started and that's how basically we have funded our software initiative. So we are bootstrapped to this point. Yeah, that's
02:30how we have made money in the history and that's our core.
Nathan Latka
02:36So launched in 2016 as the video tool, what year did you sell your first software subscription?
Arttu Haho
02:43Basically, we launched our software a year ago. And first, we bundled it with our video customers. So that was the kind of the quickest way to get some real clients to use our software. And then basically we started to sell it separately only in October or November last year.
Software Customer Count and ARR
Nathan Latka
03:07Okay, and so how many customers do you have paying for the software today?
Arttu Haho
03:11200. Two zero eight.
Nathan Latka
03:14Two zero eight customers paying. Can I take two zero eight times three ninety? You're doing about, what is that, $80,000 per month right now in revenue?
Arttu Haho
03:23It's not that simple since we,
03:27in the beginning, we sold it only with the annual plan. So actually, our ARR at the moment is 208,000 in euro. And we are just we just moved here, or I moved with my family to US to really ramp up the business here in The US, and we are... We just launched our monthly plans only two weeks ago. So now we also have monthly option to our customers to make it easier to start using
Nathan Latka
03:27Okay.
Arttu Haho
03:27This
04:01service.
Nathan Latka
04:02So you have two zero eight customers that have purchased either your video tool or the software or together, and altogether as a business, you're doing about $18,000 per month in revenue or $208,000 in run rate?
Arttu Haho
04:17Two zero eight customers only in our software. So that's like 100% software business, two zero eight customers. And in total, in total, we have had 1,500 customers using our video testimonial services back in the history, but that's the project business, that's not the recurring or continuous. But currently, two zero eight customers using our and paying for it.
Nathan Latka
04:48And and how much revenue is that?
Arttu Haho
04:52That's...
04:54Or or I mean, okay, now I missed the numbers. 208,000
05:01is the ARR for those software customers currently. Yeah. And almost 200 customers as an as a kind of the number of logos.
Nathan Latka
05:11Yeah. So if 200 customers make up 200,000 in current ARR on the software, that means on average, each of those 200 customers are paying about $90 per month for your software tool. Does that sound correct?
Arttu Haho
05:26Yep.
Why Trustmary Got into Software and Last Year's Total Revenue
Nathan Latka
05:27I see. Okay. And so why not keep building the video testimonial business? Why did you get into software at all?
Arttu Haho
05:35It was kind of, it was very, very hard. Like when you are doing a project business, we bootstrap that from 0 to 2,500,000 in Euro per year. And it's very like every year you start from zero because you need to sell everything you are going to do on that year. So maybe kind of, we didn't like the business model. And at the same time, our customers, they kept asking us that, okay, could you provide also these
06:05kind of
06:07reviews and kind of the lighter testimonials for them? So that's why we started to develop the software for that. And that's how we ended up developing this platform, and then we got more interested to kind of put more efforts on the software side.
Nathan Latka
06:25So last year, what was total revenue, both the video and the software business combined?
Arttu Haho
06:312,500,000 in euro.
Team Size, Engineers, and Sales Reps
Nathan Latka
06:33I see, okay. And how many people are in the company full time?
Arttu Haho
06:40I don't have the exact number, but around 30.
Nathan Latka
06:4330, okay. And how many of those folks are writing code, they're engineers?
Arttu Haho
06:48Only two, since the software part is so young. So only two, like we have like seven people focusing mostly to the software side at the moment, and two of them are
07:04writing code.
Nathan Latka
07:07How... Do you have any quota carrying sales reps or no?
Arttu Haho
07:10Yes, because the sales has been our way of growing pretty much so far. And so we have around 10 focusing on sales at the moment, but until COVID crisis, they were selling mostly those videos, testimonial videos. And now what we have been seeing, during the recent two months, is actually that our video business has been decreasing a little bit due to crisis, but the software business has been taking nice steps forward. And we have been also
07:49focusing the software side in our, with our sales reps as well.
Churn, Annual Plans, and Monthly Plan Launch
Nathan Latka
07:55On the software side, how sticky is the product? What does monthly gross revenue churn look like?
Arttu Haho
08:04We have been selling those annual plans, so it's difficult to say what is the monthly churn. In reality, we will start seeing those numbers when we have more monthly users.
Nathan Latka
08:19What percent of the 200 software customers when they signed up, signed up on an annual plan, do you know?
Arttu Haho
08:26Pretty much like we have like almost all of them, because we launched a monthly plan only two weeks ago.
Customer Acquisition and CAC
Nathan Latka
08:36So where are you finding these customers? What's your CAC?
Arttu Haho
08:44Currently,
08:48the most, like, the most common way of finding those customers is actually that our sales rep is making a cold call and then finding a meeting and then making a deal with the customer from the meeting. But
09:08currently, don't have the customer acquisition cost, this
09:15whole software thing is so new to us, we have not been following the numbers in the right way,
09:24coming from project, transforming to software, and now, like, hopefully we will get those number in place
09:32in following months.
Nathan Latka
09:32Mean,
09:34you can also, when I put trustmary.com into the tool I use for SEO and SEM, Ahrefs, I see that you don't currently have any paid advertisements running for the tool. However, since the beginning of this year, your organic traffic has grown pretty quickly because you've started to rank for critical terms like NPS. Walk me through that strategy.
Arttu Haho
09:56Yeah. The recent months why you haven't been seeing a lot of paid activities on the marketing side is that we have been actually a little bit narrowing our focus. We started putting efforts on sales and marketing, for example, in The US and into Europe.
10:16Some were... The more efforts somewhere in the November, December, but then we didn't get a lot of results, so that's why we have been, we scaled that down for a couple of months, for,
10:30or maybe for a three month period. So let's say February, March, April, and we have been during that time a little bit narrowing our focus with our software product. We noticed that it's maybe too generic. Our approach was too generic to reach
10:48customers, for example, here in The US market. So now we are starting to scale up the marketing efforts again. Are kind of in the phase of finding the product market fit still. That's our main goal for this year to really nail the product market fit. And so, yeah, that's
Sales Rep Commissions and Hybrid Selling Model
Arttu Haho
11:08learning
Nathan Latka
11:08How by how can you... 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?
Arttu Haho
11:25Currently it's, $390 what we provide for the monthly plan.
Nathan Latka
11:32But we just talked about earlier, you have 200 customers and about $200,000 in ARR, which means it's about $100 a month.
Arttu Haho
11:40Yeah. They were they were, selling videos at the same time as well. So so that's... The video was our main thing, what they what they sold, until COVID crisis pretty much. So
11:56So that's how they were selling videos and then with some of the customers, if they didn't want to video, then they just tried to make deal with the software plan. But it was kind of the hybrid. Were selling both.
Nathan Latka
12:14What commission do you pay the sales reps?
Arttu Haho
12:17I would say
12:23It's... We have kind of the... We we have kind of the base salary, but then I think it's like 20% what we pay for them.
Nathan Latka
12:35So 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
Arttu Haho
12:46it was like the 20% was like from the total deal. So until... Actually, I don't even know what is our current salary for the software sales only because previously we had the videos
13:03always bundled in our sales. So that that makes your... For example, you can get the testimonial video anywhere from Europe or US for 5,000 each. So with that, it was like, the average sales was a lot... Quite a lot higher. But currently
Nathan Latka
13:22Well, what do you pay a salesperson on that? What commission do you pay on a $5,000 sale?
Arttu Haho
13:30That was like 20%.
Nathan Latka
13:31I see. And you're not sure if you're paying 20% on the software sales?
Arttu Haho
13:35Yeah, we are kind of trying to find what is our way of doing it with the software.
Profitability and Reinvestment Strategy
Nathan Latka
13:40I see, I see. Is the business profitable today?
Arttu Haho
13:44Yeah, we have been profitable
13:47from 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 have been aiming for kind of the zero margin for... Until this point. So trying to invest all all the money we make to our future.
Fundraising Plans
Nathan Latka
14:09Do you have any plans to raise capital or do you wanna stay bootstrapped?
Arttu Haho
14:13We are planning that whenever we are finding the product market fit our... With our software. So...
14:23And then we find our go to market fit as well. So probably when we are starting to scale up faster, then we we are interested to get some external funding for us as well.
Nathan Latka
14:35How much would you wanna raise?
Arttu Haho
14:39I don't have any any idea for that yet, but we are in good shape with funding for another year or something like that. So, so, we will see that later.
Nathan Latka
14:49Have you found ways that you can grow faster? I mean, sounds like you're still trying to figure this out.
Arttu Haho
15:01Yeah. I didn't have like a
Nathan Latka
15:03Like, Arttu, 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?
Arttu Haho
15:12Currently, trying to utilize our...
15:19We have a big network of customers already, so how can we utilize that and how can we... Because we have been able to deliver through our history, like,
15:31above 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 ways how we can utilize that. So get those referrals from our current customers and try to build some kind of viral effect. But, yeah, that's still experimenting all of that and not any clear solution for how to do it.
A Hypothetical Buyout and the Software's Potential
Nathan Latka
16:02If someone came in and offered you guys $3,000,000 to buy the company today, would you sell?
Arttu Haho
16:073,000,000?
Nathan Latka
16:08Yep. All cash upfront?
Arttu Haho
16:13Not for 3,000,000 at the moment.
Nathan Latka
16:16Do you have a number in mind?
Arttu Haho
16:19If you give me 10, then I'm ready to do it today.
Nathan Latka
16:23Why is 10 the right number?
Arttu Haho
16:25That's how we believe what is the potential of our
16:32company and the team we have here.
Nathan Latka
16:35Okay, got it. So I mean, everyone would sell on potential if they could, because you could just make a number up out of thin air. So what gives you the confidence that you can build a $10,000,000 company if you choose not to sell?
Arttu Haho
16:49Like the start we have seen with
16:54our software. We are a solid business on the video testimonial side already, so we are making nice revenue and profits on that side. But then, like this software track has provided us pretty nice new opportunity, what we see very valuable to be in the future.
Famous Five Rapid Fire
Nathan Latka
17:12Very good. All right, Arttu, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?
Arttu Haho
17:18I would say Jim Collins, From Good to Great.
Nathan Latka
17:22Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Arttu Haho
17:29Not really. Well, maybe maybe I mentioned our, like, board member and actually chairman of the board, Mikko Hongenen from Vinyl.
Nathan Latka
17:41Vinyl. Very good. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Arttu Haho
17:52I would say PipeFry at the moment.
Nathan Latka
17:54Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Arttu Haho
17:58I can actually take that quickly from my phone because of Oura Ring. But, I believe it's, the bedtime is eight and a half hours probably, but the sleep time actually is maybe seven and, let's say that's seven and seven and a half.
Nathan Latka
18:17Seven and a half. Very good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Arttu Haho
18:21Married with, two active boys.
Nathan Latka
18:23Two kiddos. Alright. And how old are you?
Arttu Haho
18:27How old are Am I? I'm 33.
Nathan Latka
18:3033.
18:31Last question. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Arttu Haho
18:3620 year old. I would say kind of the networks you can create on that age at schools, everywhere you are, those are actually really worth building. So trust to make best best you can on that age as well.
Nathan Latka
18:58Trustmary.com. 208 customers on their software product paying $90 a month, so about $200,000 in ARR. That's on top of their video testimonial business, which did about 2,300,000. So the company doing about 2,500,000 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. Arttu, thank you for taking
19:27us to the top.
Arttu Haho
19:28Thank 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.
Nathan Latka
19:35We'll talk about it.
Arttu Haho
19:36Okay.