Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers do you have right now?

Ben Spring: Well over a hundred. We’ve been super fortunate to onboard Fortune 500 companies, lots of governments, lots of schools, and colleges. We’ve done some really rewarding work with the education of Scotland to provide training to 14 and 15-year-olds to break into the industry. We’ve been able to expand the number of people using TryHackMe whether you’re a 14-year-old, someone who wants to transition jobs, or someone who’s working in a business.

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Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many crypto traders are on the system?

Guy Gotslak: We’re in the thousands so far. Each individual contributes a good amount because the average IRA that comes in is $25,000 to $50,000. We’re already in the thousands of users and growing.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business model?

Guy Gotslak: We take a transaction fee. We’re looking to expand our products into other assets as well.

Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was happening with the business? Were the conversation rates increasing? Was the number of users increasing and how?

Ben Spring: It was completely organic. We were incredibly lucky. It was just word-of-mouth. We really tried to make a great user experience and understand the user’s problem. At the time, I was constantly iterating on the product and speaking to users. The conversion was still fairly low. I was going into my old job and I just couldn’t stop thinking about TryHackMe. I’d go out on my lunch and I’d be writing emails and doing stuff on the side. I took the jump to leave.

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583rd Roundtable Recording with Pawel Maj, Warsaw Equity Group

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: July 21 – Spotlight on Post-Seed and Pre-Series A Funding in Europe

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Pawel Maj, Investment Director, Warsaw Equity Group. We discussed post-seed and pre-series A funding in Eastern and Central Europe in the context of his firm’s investment thesis.

Matomela Group

For our entrepreneur pitches, we first had Mthetho Phakathi, from Pretoria, South Africa, pitch Matomela Group, a manufacturing venture.

Interlpure

Next, Rigdha Banerjee from Jersey City, New Jersey, pitched Intelpure, a clothing rental marketplace concept.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: My Digital Money CEO Guy Gotslak (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To what extent did the consulting business help you in this new project?

Guy Gotslak: A lot. I was customer-focused. I wanted to get personalized services to our clients. We ended up getting acquired by a software company that does personalization where the idea is to help give personalized digital experiences. It can be on any channel. I just became passionate about being able to do that but still keep humans in the mix too.

Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the company that acquired you?

Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you finished university, what point were you at?

Ben Spring: I can’t remember now. It must have been 10,000 users.

Sramana Mitra: All free still?

Ben Spring: We introduced a pay-as-you-go model. You can pay per course. After talking to users, we found that it wasn’t the best model for us, so we moved over to a subscription model where you pay monthly and you get access to every single thing on TryHackMe.

583rd Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 583rd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, July 21, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!