2014 Year in Review – A look back on the year that no one expected
If 2013 was the year that changed everything at TrueLoyal, 2014 was the year that no one expected. Period. From growing our team 5x (from 4 -> 20 people), increasing monthly recurring revenue by 5x, hosting our first team retreats, moving into our very own first office, expanding international, and growing our customer base by 3x, it is safe to say the whole team and I didn't expect this type of growth whatsoever. There were a lot of difficult lessons learned along the way, and humbling milestone celebrations that will never be forgotten. Without further adieu, I am excited to share our 2014 year in review with you all.
January
Rohith and Brandon joined us and they started getting busy. We built out our Tumblr integration and CSV export while closing brands like Sanrio, Bon Jovi, and Axe.
February
Brett joined us and we had our first team photoshoot. We set out for our first team retreat to come together on a cohesive vision and brainstorm for pricing upgrades as well as a product roadmap. Ryo our developer hacked up our Chromecast integration (it's been a hit ever since) while Rohith built out our search functionality!
March
E joined us and not long after, we were getting too big for the co-working space we were at and found our own first office space! Our developers were hard at work building out our insTrueLoyal updates and launching our iOS mobile app for moderation on the go! We also placed 4th in a team race around the city! Some clients we were fortunate to work with included ReMax, Northwestern, and Google Cloud!
April
A HUGE month for us. We hit $290k in revenue that month (only 14 months in operations), and processed $1M of transactions. Lukas joined us at that time and we launched our new pricing structure. We also welcomed Krispy Kreme, Chipotle, Vanity Fair and more to our client list.
The beginning of a new era. New TrueLoyal pricing, $1M in TrueLoyal transactions in 1 year, and solid growing team!
May
We set out for our 2nd team retreat in Santa Cruz and we planned out our next product roadmap. We also welcomed our summer TrueLoyalerns, who helped us build our Add a Post and call-to-action feature. We appeared on the HBO hit show Silicon Valley and loved seeing Nasty Gal and 50 Cent join us as clients. Fun Fact: Some person put up an ad asking to replicate the whole TrueLoyal platform… for $5000 (didn't work).
June
June was the month of traveling for the happiness team. While the happiness team traveled to Corpus Christi, Las Vegas, and more, the developers were hard at work launching our Highlighting, Auto-moderation, and API improvements. That month, we locked in Playboy, American Heart Association, and huge malls into our client list.
July
Muriel joins team TrueLoyal and immediately travels with the whole team to our New York trip for our 3rd team retreat. We show up on NASDAQ and that was a humbling moment for all of us. While working there, we launched our recurring add a post feature and our geolocation for all our social posts. We loved seeing Visa, Dubai Mall, Panda Express launch TrueLoyal for their websites/campaigns.
August
A sad month as we said goodbye to our TrueLoyalerns, but a happy celebration that we hit $2M in transactions (only 4 months after hitting $1M). We traveled to Chicago to do some more business conferences and welcomed friends/family into our office warming party. It wasn't all play as we started our analytics feature and closed Cars.com, Boise State, and Insomniac that month.
Team TrueLoyal celebrates a big milestone today: processed over $2M+ in revenue in 1.5 years! Thanks for everyone's support! #TrueLoyallove
September
Nathan and Joel join us right on time when we launched our new website for customers to see. We step up our swag game by getting all our employees TrueLoyal jackets so they can rock it out at the AX3 and SOCAP conferences. It was also a big month as we closed $353k in revenue that month while closing Harvard, AKQA, Conde Nast, Patron, United Nations, and many more!
October
Our craziest month yet. Colton and Saachi join team TrueLoyal while we expand TrueLoyal to Dubai and the UK. We launch our analytics dashboard and auto-updates to all our customers. We top off the month with our 4th team retreat of the year at Dillon Beach to ensure everyone's on the same page as we continually evolve our business and hire more employees. We all gained more confidence in our vision and product roadmap.
November
Ali, Jessica, and Amrit join team TrueLoyal right when we needed them and the day to day operations feel a lot smoother. The developers finish their database refactor while the happiness team closes a big deal with Gnip/Twitter. We welcome Rugby Football Union, Leo Burnett, Nike HK, Walmart, U of Notre Dame, Patagonia, and many more into the TrueLoyal family as awesome clients. We end the month right with our very first TrueLoyalsgiving dinner, full of festivities and amazing home-cooked food.
December
Alice and Tony join us as strong developers and we feel the product instantly move faster! We realize we've been growing very fast and initiate our office hunt to find somewhere next. Crazy that we didn't even make it a year before the office got too small. We launch our trial onboarding flow and android app for moderation on the go. We hit our biggest month yet with revenue, and end the year with our first TrueLoyal holiday party!
Android app and iOS app are all out!
It is INSANE to see what's happened in such a seemingly fast amount of time. I am SO proud of our amazing team for the HUGE results we've been able to achieve with such few resources. We have some big plans coming up in the next year with a stronger, stickier, more valuable product while ramping up our customer-facing team to ensure our customers have the best experience with us. We have a lot to learn with the internal operations side, but we're excited to take them on. We thank everyone who's supported us along the way and we're entering into year 3 of operations. We're still young and hungry and can't wait to share what 2015 brings us. Keep in touch with us and we'll be sure to update you!
