Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers do you have right now?

Ben Spring: Well over a hundred. We’ve been super fortunate to onboard Fortune 500 companies, lots of governments, lots of schools, and colleges. We’ve done some really rewarding work with the education of Scotland to provide training to 14 and 15-year-olds to break into the industry. We’ve been able to expand the number of people using TryHackMe whether you’re a 14-year-old, someone who wants to transition jobs, or someone who’s working in a business.

Sramana Mitra: What is an average deal size of an enterprise deal?

Ben Spring: We’re still experimenting with pricing. About two or three months ago, the cost per user per month was $25. We increased it to $40. The deal size ranges from £4,000 all the way up. We believe in this land and expand the approach. A Fortune 500 company will buy a handful of subscriptions to try out. They’ll see value in it and they’ll expand across their teams. It might start off small, but the opportunity to grow that out is often quite big.

Sramana Mitra: If you look at the geographical footprint of your one million users, is it largely UK or global?

Ben Spring: Primarily US, India, UK, and then lots of places in Europe.

Sramana Mitra: Are these all people working in the security departments of large companies? Are there also people who work for startups?

Ben Spring: It’s so vast. We have so many people from so many backgrounds and skillsets such as career changers and people who are interested in cyber security. To create a user experience for so many people is a challenge.

Sramana Mitra: Right now, your offering is still training? It’s a subscription to a pool of content that keeps people learning.

Ben Spring: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of the team are content producers?

Ben Spring: The majority of them. We’ll be 65 at the end of the year. We’ve doubled down on ensuring that we’re building high-quality content. As we mature, we start to build out other teams and departments in TryHackMe. It’s been an exciting journey.

Sramana Mitra: It’s an edtech business largely?

Ben Spring: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: In this process of creating content, are you creating content for each of these different personas?

Ben Spring: At the beginning, we did. What content can we make that is applicable to the most number of users on TryHackMe. That was beginner-level content. Once we covered lots of different bases, we then said, “What is the next set of content we can release that is going to be applicable to as many users as possible?”

Our content strategy has changed a bit now. We’ve got so many people on the platform and we’re working with large enterprises. We can get lots of information from the people who are on the platform to understand their training needs and create content based on that.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the market for this?

Ben Spring: It’s one I struggle to answer. The TAM is so big because cyber security impacts so many people in different ways whether that’s security awareness training all the way to the technical piece. If you’re a penetration tester, how do you know about this latest exploitation? If you’re an IT administrator, how do you know what to look for in order to pass on the right team? There are so many areas of tech and individuals where cybersecurity is relevant.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe
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