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Turns customer reviews and testimonials into website social proof that helps businesses convert more visitors.
Trustmary used a profitable, labor-intensive video service to finance software, then sold the software first to customers who already trusted the team.
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Arttu Haho started Trustmary in June 2016 as a project business producing authentic customer testimonial videos. The team had completed almost 4,000 projects for 1,500 companies. That service grew to about €2.5 million per year, but each year required selling the work again. Customers also asked for lighter review and testimonial tools, so the company developed software and bundled it with video projects. By the interview, 208 customers paid for the software, with €208,000 in annual recurring revenue. Haho said the company had about 30 people, including seven focused mainly on software, two of them engineers, and roughly ten people in sales. The business was bootstrapped and profitable, with profits reinvested. Trustmary had just introduced monthly plans after initially selling annual subscriptions. The strategic transition was still underway: the company was narrowing its software positioning and seeking product-market fit while its established service business funded the effort.
Trustmary’s first software customers came from a customer base the team had already earned through video testimonial projects. Bundling the new platform with existing video work gave familiar buyers a low-friction way to try it, and the founder described this as the quickest route to real software customers.
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Data credibility: Founder-reported in a Top Founders interview. Haho reported 208 software customers and €208,000 ARR, as well as about €2.5 million in annual revenue for the combined business. The transcript contains ambiguity around average software pricing and does not provide third-party financial verification, audited statements, customer acquisition cost, or a reliable churn figure.
Trustmary’s first software subscriptions were sold to customers already buying its video testimonial projects. The software launched about a year before the interview, and the company initially bundled it with those video customers; separate software sales began around October or November of the prior year.
Trustmary’s early flywheel joined customer delivery, proof, and sales. The video service created relationships with 1,500 companies and a network of satisfied customers; Haho said the company had consistently delivered above what it promised and had high NPS.
Trustmary had a meaningful buffer against the slow software-learning period because the video-testimonial business had been profitable and was reinvesting its earnings. That let the team continue refining a software product whose positioning was still too generic for some target customers.
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