In more than 20 years of leading and growing media intelligence companies, Truescope co-founder and CEO John Croll has explored many avenues to funding, including private equity, venture capital and (of course) debt funding, as well as IPO.
When it came to building Truescope, and fuelling the startup’s growth, he and co-founder Michael Bade were “a little more experienced, with a little more grey hair”, John says.
It stands to reason their approach to funding was a little more mature, as well.
Truescope uses AI technology to ingest and assess millions of pieces of media and commentary, from both mainstream and social media, to create sentiment analysis reports in near real-time.
Predominantly, Truescope’s clients are governments and corporates. But the tool can be used anywhere where it’s considered valuable to conduct reputation management or track trending issues — especially if that can be done quickly, and especially if the results can compare the views of mainstream media with those of the online public.
“Technology and the media cycle have both changed so much,” John explains.
“It used to be that we would all tune in at 6pm for the news broadcasts and read our daily newspapers. It was a daily news cycle. Now, it’s down to a couple of minutes,” he adds.
“Our job is to alert clients to how a story is breaking and how it’s changing.”
How Truescope fuelled its growth

Every time John and Michael have considered accessing capital to fund growth, they have considered various options and chosen varying routes.
Bootstrapping to Series A
The founders bootstrapped for the first two years, before raising seed funding in 2021.
The seed capital was pegged for continuing development of the SaaS platform, and to assist with market entry into Singapore.
Accordingly, the founders were looking for a significant chunk of cash, that would fuel fast growth. They also saw value in bringing in VCs with experience, and who were well aligned to their goals.
“We had a great platform, which had started to build some revenue and we had product-market fit,” John explains.
“We knew the size of the check that we wanted, in order to grow the business rapidly over the next two years. And we doubled the business and then doubled again.”

SAFE note
At the end of 2022, Truescope made a strategic acquisition in the US, and took out a SAFE note to fund it.
A Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) note is a convertible security, allowing founders to raise money while offering investors the guaranteed right to convert their investment into equity later.
SAFE notes effectively invite investors to participate in a future round, thereby delaying the dilution of ownership. In this case, it was clear the acquisition would lead to an uptick in Truescope’s valuation.
“It was good for the founders, but it was also good for the investors, who could see there was going to be an actual increase in the business,” John says.
Debt funding
Debt funding from Tractor helped fund another acquisition. This time, Truescope already held a 60% share of a New Zealand company and planned to buy out the remainder.
Again, the team knew this deal would increase Truescope’s valuation. The founders also had a Series A in their sights, meaning the timing was right to utilise debt funding.
“We knew we were going to deploy the capital almost instantly, and we knew that gave us access to cash flows, from a 100%-owned business,” John explains.
“That would allow us to service the debt and the interest immediately, without diluting ourselves in any way.”
Although they had growth plans, and still plan to go to a Series A, the New Zealand acquisition wasn’t the right time, or the right reason.
“We wanted to make sure that we had all the alignment right around our growth drivers, expansion in the US, and all those different things, before we went for another large round of funding,” John says.
“We will go to Series A, because we’ll probably need a bigger cheque, and it will be very much around growth capital at that point.”
The right cash at the right time

It will come as no surprise that, at every point in Truescope’s growth journey, John and Michael have weighed up various sources of capital, and gone with what made sense for the particular use case at the particular time.
That has always been John’s approach (indeed, this is not his first rodeo) and, with more funding options in the market than ever, it’s what he advises other founders to do, too.
The right choice is not only what’s best for the business at the time, but what will set it in good stead for future growth, and future fundraising, he says.
For Truescope, for example, accessing capital for overseas expansion without giving away equity boosted its revenue and valuation, putting in a strong position ahead of Series A.
No business has unlimited equity, he warns.
“You can only give it up once. Do it sparingly.”
At the same time, the market adapts to external metrics, which can dictate how successful a particular strategy could be.
SAFE notes were popular in 2021-22, John explains, when valuations seemed to be on an unstoppable upward trajectory. Today, they have fallen out of favour.
There is no one ‘correct’ route to capital for one industry, startup or founder. What’s important, John says, is being clear on your goals, exploring your options, and — if you do seek venture capital — understanding what your business will offer to them.
“There are a lot of good businesses out there looking for funding, so you’ve got to be super clear about what you want to use the funds for,” he explains.
“If you know that, then there are different ways that you can go about it, and there are some pretty interesting new products that have come to Australia.”