Attest

How Attest Grew to $10M ARR by Changing Consumer Research

Attest is an enterprise-grade research platform designed for both qualitative and quantitative insights. It empowers users to deeply understand their audience, adapt strategies, drive growth, and build resonant brands through actionable data.

Founded By

Jeremy King

Monthly Revenue

$550K

Founders

Employees

173 (est.)

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2015

Customer

B2B

Founded By
Jeremy King: Monthly Revenue
$550K: Founders
1

Employees
173 (est.): Profitable
Yes: Year Started
2015

Customer
B2B

Who is Jeremy King?

Jeremy King, the founder of Attest, has a background in science, specifically in genetics and ecology, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Before founding Attest in 2015, he worked for a decade at McKinsey as an Engagement Manager, which honed his insights into business strategy and the importance of understanding target customers.

What problem does Attest solve?

Attest helps businesses easily understand what potential customers think about their products and marketing, solving the massive headache of relying on assumptions instead of data.

My image

How did Jeremy come up with the idea for Attest?

In the early days of Attest, Jeremy King drew inspiration from his experiences as a scientist and consultant, where he observed a recurring challenge: businesses often made decisions based on guesswork, lacking concrete data about their potential customers. This realization stemmed from his time at McKinsey, where he noted professionals' reliance on assumptions rather than real evidence, particularly regarding consumer desires in diverse markets.

Driven by his passion for empiricism and the scientific method, Jeremy sought to create a tool that would simplify consumer research, making it accessible to anyone regardless of their expertise. Before jumping into building the product, he conducted extensive desktop research to understand the total addressable market (TAM) and potential competitive advantages. Moreover, he validated his idea through a unique experiment by engaging directly with retailers to uncover their unmet research needs, which helped him recognize a broader demand.

Taking a strategic approach, Jeremy focused on gathering insights and refining the concept through practical tests and feedback. This allowed him to iteratively develop the prototype while addressing practical challenges, such as the widespread misconception that research is inherently difficult. Learning from this validation process, he aimed to dismantle these barriers and build a solution that empowers businesses to make informed decisions with ease.

How did Jeremy build the initial version of Attest?

Attest started by addressing the challenge of traditionally complex market research with a tech-driven approach to make the process ridiculously easy. Founder Jeremy King, aware of the intricacy involved, aimed to build a robust backend that empowers effortless data collection and analysis, starting with foundational input from potential clients.

The early development phase took nine months and involved engineering the architecture to handle multi-lingual surveys from diverse geographical locations, ensuring scalability from the outset. Facing complexities, King engaged with a foundational engineer, Tony Hunter, to overcome challenges related to building a seamless and comprehensive research tool.

The experience was notably challenging, demanding the creation of an intuitive interface while maintaining a powerful backend, offset by strategic hires, and necessitated overcoming setbacks to establish a reliable and efficient SaaS platform.

What was the growth strategy for Attest and how did they scale?

Referral Program

Attest implemented a referral program that played a crucial role in its growth. The approach was to incentivize existing users to bring in new customers by offering benefits or discounts. This helped expand their user base significantly.

Why it worked: Referral programs capitalize on word-of-mouth marketing, tapping into the existing customer network to bring in new users at a significantly reduced acquisition cost. By providing incentives, they motivated customers to actively promote the service, thus enhancing customer lifetime value and broadening their reach.

Strategic Partnerships

Attest formed strategic partnerships with other companies to co-market or integrate their services, thereby reaching a wider audience. These collaborations often involved bundling services or creating joint offers that provided additional value to users.

Why it worked: Through partnerships, Attest accessed new customer segments and enhanced its service offerings. The mutual benefits of such arrangements helped both parties leverage each other's strengths, increasing visibility and credibility in the market.

Content Marketing and SEO

Attest utilized content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) to increase organic traffic to their site. By creating informative and engaging content that resonated with their target audience, they improved their visibility on search engines, which translated into increased user acquisition over time.

Why it worked: Consistently publishing high-quality content allowed Attest to position itself as an authority in the consumer research space. This strategy not only improved search engine rankings but also built trust with potential customers by addressing their pain points and providing valuable insights.

Freemium Model and Product Trials

Attest initially experimented with a freemium model, allowing users to try aspects of their platform for free. This approach aimed at lowering the barrier to entry and enabling potential customers to experience the product's value firsthand before committing to a purchase.

Why it worked: Providing a freemium option or a limited trial version encouraged users to explore the service without upfront investment. It allowed Attest to demonstrate the platform's capabilities, leading to higher conversion rates as users experienced the benefits directly and sought paid features or increased usage limits.

What's the pricing strategy for Attest?

Attest offers a tiered pricing model with packages starting at £125/month, focusing on flexible survey needs, and provides a free trial for initial exploration.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building Attest?

Embrace Failure as a Path to Learning: Attest promotes a culture where failure is not feared but seen as an opportunity for growth. Encouraging team members to take risks and learn from mistakes fosters innovation and progress.
Curiosity-Driven Culture: Hiring for curiosity and fostering it among team members can lead to significant rewards. It brings innovative ideas and creates a collaborative work environment, enhancing team performance.
Challenge Assumptions: Jeremy King emphasizes questioning long-held beliefs and assumptions, which can lead to discovering new business strategies and creating unique value.
Aligning Interests for Effective Team Building: Attest highlights the importance of ensuring new hires align with the company's mission and values to drive engagement and productivity, fostering a motivated workforce.
Quick Adaptability: The business's ability to detect, debate, and enact changes swiftly promotes continuous improvement, maintaining competitiveness and relevance in a fast-paced market.

Discover Similar Business Ideas Like Attest

	Idea	Revenue	Traffic	Revenue Per Visitor	Starting Costs
Pixels for Humans	UX service provider	$24.2K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	$500 to start
Ignore No More	marketing agency	$13K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	$5K to start
Pickfu	online survey tool	$83.3K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	— to start
Razrtech	technology consulting...	$83.3K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	— to start
Spiralyze	chatbot conversions l...	$25K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	— to start
Evergreen Support	customer support app	$7K monthly	— monthly	— per visitor	— to start