Bootstrapping with Angel Money: Josh Levy, CEO of BeenVerified (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the use cases? What are the drivers to want to subscribe to something like this? In my life, for instance, if I need to check somebody out, I go to LinkedIn and look at their profiles.

Josh Levy: If I have to pick the hardest problem for BeenVerified, it’s that we have too many different segments of users. It’s a gift and a curse. We have individuals who are just curious about what’s out there. Obviously, you have one type of service, which is a credit report. That only tells so much information. You have family members who are interested in things like, “Who are my kids dating? Who moved into my neighborhood?” We have people who are looking to reconnect. Obviously for a very large portion of people, Facebook and LinkedIn will solve that.

We actually get letters from people with amazing stories saying, “You helped me find my birth father that I thought I would never find.” You also have professionals. Let’s say you’re interested in doing business with somebody on a more professional level. LinkedIn might tell you part of the story like where they went to school or work, but it won’t give you other information.

We look at BeenVerified as part of that ecosystem and not necessarily a replacement. We expect people to do a Google search, Facebook search, and a LinkedIn search. Our hope is that BeenVerfied provides another lens for them to look and make those sorts of decisions. We have different types of users and we’re constantly trying to think about what’s the best way to service different users.

Sramana Mitra: You don’t have a dominant set of use cases that propels people to want to subscribe?

Josh Levy: It’s interesting. We really do not have one use case where we say, “BeenVerified is just going to focus on this use case.” At its core, there are six segments. Even under that, there are so many use cases. A big focus of the company is to start thinking about what are the more focus segments. Maybe they are different products entirely or maybe they’re just different features under BeenVerified.

Sramana Mitra: You said in 2007, you pivoted to his model?

Josh Levy: 2009.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? You launched this service online. How did you acquire customers and what happened in the first year of that launch?

Josh Levy: As simplistic as it may sound, we had just iterated. The first way that we found product-market fit was ironically, through just one big national television commercial. Since then, it’s been trying to validate all the different marketing channels that are out there. Listening to the customers in terms of what type of data they want. We are constantly experimenting with different marketing channels. The things that worked for us in 2009 don’t work today. The market is constantly changing.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping with Angel Money: Josh Levy, CEO of BeenVerified
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