#340: Haroon Mokhtarzada, on Taking Truebill from Ideation to $1B Exit in 6 Years, How to Stand Out in a Crowded Industry, and Creating a Successful Performance Marketing Engine

Just Go Grind

Haroon Mokhtarzada is the CEO and Co-Founder at Rocket Money, previously Truebill, a leading personal finance app with a mission to empower people to live their best financial lives. They offer their 3.4 million members a unique understanding of their finances and a suite of valuable services that save both time and money -- ultimately giving them a leg up on their financial journey. Members can manage their subscriptions, lower their bills, build budgets and automatically set aside money to reach their savings goals. They’ve saved their members $245 million and counting.

Haroon is a Harvard Law grad turned serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He was the founder and CEO of Webs.com, a popular website creation platform that grew to 50 million users before being acquired by Vistaprint for over $100M. After Webs, Haroon co-founded Truebill in 2015. As CEO, Haroon grew Truebill into a leading personal finance app, topping 2.5 million members and over $100M in annual recurring revenue before being acquired by Rocket Companies in 2021 with the goal of creating a centralized destination for consumers to manage their entire financial lives. Haroon has a passion for technology startups, innovation, global change, and elegant problem solving. He has personally invested in over 100 technology startups including early stage investments in Instacart, Carta, Relativity Space, PlutoTV, and more. Haroon is a 2021 Henry Crown Fellow and has participated on several boards including the American Express Open Digital Advisory Board and the United Nations Global Entrepreneurs Council.

Topics Covered by Haroon Mokhtarzada in this Episode

• What Truebill (now Rocket Money) is
• Deciding to start another company after a $100M+ exit
• The difference between building a company in 2001 and 2015
• What enabled Haroon to go from 0 to $1B exit in 6 years
• Some of the other business ideas Haroon has had and how he chooses which to execute on
• Building a minimum lovable product
• Truebill’s go-to-market strategy
• The challenges they faced in funding a PFM (personal financial management) company
• The evolution that led to their unique pay what you want subscription model for a subscription-canceling product
• Being humble enough to not be too tied to your own intuition
• The performance marketing engine that allowed Truebill to go from $1M ARR to $100M ARR in 4 years
• Which metrics are the most important to focus on
• Choosing fully aligned investors
• Haroon’s evaluation of the other major players in the PFM space
• What made Truebill unique in a crowded industry, enabling their success
• Haroon’s thoughts on the FinTech regulatory environment and government’s appropriate role
• From manually cancelling subscriptions to automating and scaling their services
• Haroon’s takeaways from his exits
• How Haroon manages his time
• Why Haroon previously had a bit of a chip on his shoulder
• Why Haroon began angel investing and his approach to it now
• Balancing running a company with angel investing
• The benefits of co-founding with your siblings
• Experiences Haroon would like to have had and which company he would’ve liked to have founded

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