Introducing Trust, and the Importance of Product-Founder Fit

Many startups, from e-commerce and gaming to marketplaces, rely on customer acquisition to survive. These startups spend the majority of their marketing budgets on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. This is because customers are there.

Digital advertising spending is expected to increase 25% to $191 billion this year. Google (69%), Facebook (59%), Snapchat (1116%), and Twitter (87%) just reported rapid growth in year-over-year advertising revenues. It looks good for these companies.

Ask any person in the customer acquisition ecosystem -- investors, marketers, founders -- and they'll all tell you the same thing: Customer acquisition (CAC), is becoming more difficult and more costly. This can partly be explained by the rapid growth of e-commerce as well as direct-to-consumer business due to global lockdowns and the pandemic. eCommerce grew 39% last year, so there is simply more demand. Some of this can also be attributed the increased pressure on available platforms to facilitate scaled acquisitions in a more "walled garden" and privacy-restricted environment.

Despite the rapid and steady growth of digital advertising, or maybe because of it, there are very few tools that a marketer can use to understand their spend and performance across channels. They also don't have the ability to share their best practices with peers so they are at an advantage.

Trust is here to help. It was created to empower those who spend money in channels to ensure they are not at disadvantage.

Trust, has today announced a $9 Million financing. Upfront is an investor. This platform helps you make the most out of marketing investment. It provides both analytics and a network of like-minded executives to share their experiences across platforms. It's like Bloomberg for marketers. Smaller companies and teams have the same firepower as large organizations, and can optimize their spend across channels and find new high-performing opportunities. This is achieved through aggregated, anonymized competitor benchmarking, market-level performance information across major social and advertising platforms, as well as curated news and conversation by industry leaders.

Trust will also launch the Trust virtual card. This essentially funnels credit and preferred billing to any company, allowing them up to 20x increase in marketing purchasing power and 45-day payment terms on all marketing investments.

Why did I invest in trust?

A VC is looking for a new investor who can be a product-founder fit. Does the founder have a unique insight or advantage that will make them able to build this product and/or business? While there are many smart, talented founders out there, you would be surprised at how few have an "unfair advantage" in terms of their product or audience.

Trust is headed by CEO and cofounder James Borow. He led Snap's global programmatic advertising platform and saw the self-service ads revenue grow from 0 to $1B+ in three years. James, along with his co-founders, many of whom were also part of the Snap team, saw firsthand the difficulties companies had in understanding where and how best to invest in marketing and the opaque nature of the platforms for advertisers. This was the challenge they faced every day at Snap. Trust was born out of their desire to change the marketing and ad-spend dynamics and help those who work on the ground. This is the perfect example of product-founder fit and why I believe this business will succeed.

James is a founder that I have believed in since day one. He understands and sympathizes with customers' pain points, both from the platform and user sides. Many people have attempted to solve multichannel optimization and analytics. But James and his team have the unique skills and experience to crack the code.

As an early-stage investor in companies that are struggling to acquire customers, I am excited to see Trust transform the landscape for both startups and larger organizations. Growth leaders, entrepreneurs and marketers