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Truescope: Funding Growth Without Dilution
Harry Brown
Sector
SaaS
Deal Type
Debt
Company Stage
Series A
Investor Group
Other Stakeholders
Summary
Scale Ventures worked closely with John Croll to build the strategic finance layer behind a new OneVentures growth credit facility. The facility gave Truescope runway on the right terms, and the layer we built runs the business today and sets up the next raise.
How The Engagement Started
A mutual connection put Pat and John together. Various cups of coffee over six months about the growth of Truescope, the transactions John was building toward, and what kind of finance and analytics layer would need to sit underneath those moves. Having IPO’d Isentia, John grew it to be worth over $1.0bn so John knew what good strategic finance and transactions look like, and the substance that underpins higher valuations.
The Business
Truescope is the AI native media intelligence platform John andMichael Bade founded in 2020 to bring clarity to enterprise communications teams. It now serves more than 600 clients acrossAustralia, New Zealand, Singapore and the US, and is taking clients from the incumbents that defined the category 20 years ago.
John’s finance function was running BAU nicely. What he didn’t have around him was the strategic finance and analytics layer that helps make investment decisions, build the shareholder value case,and back the next transaction. With the right layer in place, John wanted to invest into the market position the team had built on the right terms and with the right investor.
What We Did
Scale Ventures embedded alongside John, his outsourced CFO and the existing investors through the deal. We worked through the capital options with the board and landed on growth credit as the bridge to a future equity round. We then ran the deal: the multi currency four-country model, the JV equity accounting, the segmentation of ARR, and the SaaS metrics pack a credit committee could underwrite. We made the introduction to OneVentures, stood up the dataroom, ran the diligence, negotiated the term sheet, and coordinated the legal and shareholder workstreams through to drawdown.
Outcome
Truescope closed a growth credit facility with OneVentures, extended runway, with alignment on further funding to grow alongside the business. OneVentures described it as the best prepared deal and DD package they could recall, noting our ability to make a complex business simple and solve issues collaboratively. Following the funding round, our engagement has rolled into the strategic finance and analytics layer John was looking for in the first place. The current work spans customer journey analysis, churn and unit economics, board management and board pack support, and a working partnership with the product and GTM teams on where the data identifies efficient growth. The engagement is positioned for the next equity round and potential M&A or exits.
Founder's Words
"Truescope is competing and winning against the incumbents, and that needs the right financial horsepower. Scale Ventures didn't hand us a process map. They mobilised and sat inside the deal across four jurisdictions, ran the model and the dataroom and aligned the lender to a clean timeline. We came out of it with the capital we needed, and the financial insight we need to keep investing strategically"
John Croll AM
Co-Founder & CEO, Truescope