Intro - Book Video Calls with World-Class Experts

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Company & Team Introduction

Intro is the online marketplace to book 1-on-1 meetings with top experts from around the world. The idea for the company came to the co-founders as the pandemic hit and the world economy came to a standstill. One of the founders, Raad, wanted to hire a world-class interior designer for a new redesign project he had been working on, but without the ability to meet in person, he couldn’t find anyone to help. Couple this with the sharp increase in the adoption of video-based communication due to COVID-19, and Intro was born in 2020. The founders both boast impressive resumes. Raad Morben, the CEO of Intro, is a graduate of the mechanical engineering program at UC Santa Barbara. He already has a prior exit under his belt, selling his SMB operating system business, Lettuce, to Intuit in 2014 for a reported $30M. The company’s CTO, Tim Watson, graduated from Purdue University, where he built the school’s iOS app and has received over 150,000 downloads. After graduating, Tim and his roommates struggled to find an apartment, so they started RadPad to simplify the apartment rental process. As CTO, Tim scaled his engineering team from 2 to 15 people before being acquired in 2016. Intro is building out its team remotely to increase access to talent but is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company is currently working with a team of ~9 employees.

Product Overview

Intro’s platform allows anyone to hire world-class experts in a broad and ever-expanding array of topics, enabling anyone to reach the best investors, interior designers, home builders, CEOs, wellness professionals, fashion stylists, etc. Users can browse Intro’s marketplace to choose the category of expert they are looking for, then check each expert's profile to see which expert is the best fit for their specific needs. Video sessions on the platform usually range from 15 to 60 minutes long.

Total Addressable Market

The total addressable market for Intro is hard to quantify, but it is massive. First, the company benefits from the tailwinds of the gig economy, giving experts desirable traits like high earning potential and scheduling flexibility. Furthermore, the total market size for video conferencing is enormous. The total addressable market in 2022 was over 7B and is estimated to balloon to 17B+ by 2030, for an 11.9% CAGR through the period.

Business Model & The Numbers

To align the company’s incentives with its network of experts, Intro only gets paid when you do with its transaction-based business model. The company takes a 30% percent cut of each transaction booked through their marketplace and 10% when experts set up their own call using Intro’s scheduling, video, and payment products. The highly specialized supply on Intro’s marketplace drives higher AOVs than other marketplaces, such as Fiverr, where many people charge 5-10$ an hour for a lower quality service. Experts on Intro typically charge anywhere from $100 to $2000/hour.

Traction

Intro has had impressive growth thus far; in 2023, they added experts from Sweetgreen (publicly traded on NYSE: SE), Loom (Acq. by Atlassian for 975M), and Nextdoor (publicly traded on NASDAQ: KIND) to join the platform solely through word of mouth. The platform has a strong supply of experts, including Alexis Ohanian himself, Alli Webb, Nikita Bier, Andrew Chen, and many other trailblazers in their field, with many joining organically. Intro estimates that experts could generate up to 500k a year in additional revenue for themselves through the platform.

Competitors

Intro doesn’t face many notable direct competitors with their combination of marketplace + booking platform, but the incumbents in the space are strong. The 800-pound Gorilla in the room is Gerson Lehman Group Consulting, AKA GLG Consulting. The company was founded in 1998 and has built up an extensive network of over a million expert freelance consultants in various fields throughout its years in business, including sectors such as finance, law, business, advertising, etc. GLG filed to go public in 2021 before withdrawing in early 2022. At the time of their filing, the company had ~628M in revenue, impressive gross margins of over 70%, was profitable with 20% adjusted EBITDA margins, and serviced over 20k unique GLG users.

Funding

Intro has raised two rounds of funding and is backed by some of the world's top venture firms and angel investors. The company most recently closed a huge 10M round of seed funding. The round was led by a16z with participation from Alexis OHanian’s 776 and an impressive list of angels, including Anne Wojcicki (CEO of 23&Me), Phoenix Suns Star Kevin Durant, Michael Ovitz (founder of CAA), David Salomon (CEO of Goldman Sachs), and to bolster their network of experts. Before Intro’s seed round, the company raised an additional 2M in funding at undisclosed terms, per TechCrunch.