Cody Barbo Wants to Take Trust & Will Public
Trust and Will's Co-Founder and CEO Cody Barbo shares his goal to build not only a richly valued company, but a legacy-making one.
Every week, we publish an article or exclusive in-depth story with original insights that you can’t read anywhere else. Receive a weekly article each week and join 1,000+ founders and investors by subscribing below.
Cody Barbo, co-founder and CEO of Trust & Will, a San Diego-based startup that raised nearly $50 million from top investors, has lofty goals as his company enters its 7th year working to modernize an antiquated industry — estate planning.
How big can Trust & Will become? Was a question I asked Barbo three years ago for an interview in the San Diego Business Journal. It had 17 full-time employees and raised $8 million from a small group of investors. It had helped 80,000 families “protect their legacy” online using its estate planning service at the time.
What started as a tiny startup in Little Italy San Diego, has scaled into a 90-person global organization with employees in 20 different states. To date, it has helped over 500,000 thousand families and is on pace to help over a million in the next three years.
Trust & Will saw more than 1,000 percent in growth this year, according to internal data analyzed by Deloitte this year. Barbo said the 90-person company more than doubled its revenue this year, but didn’t disclose exact figures.
“Our dream is to go public,” he said. “It’s not to check a box — and move on — we firmly believe Trust & Will is on track to become a generational company.”
High-Level Overview
Founded in 2017, Trust & Will is a technology company, with a mission to make estate planning accessible for everyone.
It provides an “easy and secure” way to create estate plans and settle estates online, with the ability to customize legal documents that adhere to individual state and county guidelines.
Trust & Will initially started as a scrappy startup idea that was “willed into existence” by three San Diego co-founders — all who were involved in local startup scene during the mid 2010s.While the company is quickly becoming a household name for itself in the industry
Founding Story
In August 2017, three co-founders — Cody Barbo, Daniel Goldstein and Brian Lamb — launched Trust and Will to make estate planning easy and accessible for families.
After several years of iterations, Trust and Will’s software became the first all-in-one platform that streamlines estate planning in a straight-forward process.
In particular, it provides everyone the opportunity to establish a trust, finalize a will, and manage it from their own home.
“We’re building the TurboTax for estate planning,” said Cody Barbo, co-founder and CEO at Trust & Will. “For the last six years, we've been earning the trust of families and helping them protect their family legacies online.”
The Product
The majority of its customers have found Trust & Will through consumer-focused marketing, which includes spending millions of dollars on advertising through social media, search, and even TV commercials.
It operates on a paid model, with specific pricing for individuals starting at ($159) and offers premium pricing for families (starting at $699) and an annual membership to store documents safely.
The company has corporate partners such as AARP, Mint.com, Acorns, Haven Life Insurance and Girl Scouts of the USA, who often refer customers.
It also relies heavily on big-name partners like American Express, UBS, Fifth Third Bank, Northwestern Mutual, among others who help drive new business, said Barbo.
Raising Capital from Investors
Trust and Will raise $2 million from Rise of the Rest, Halogen Ventures, and various angel investors in January 2019.
That amount has ballooned to nearly $50 million, after bringing on Amex Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, SEI Ventures and USAA along for the ride.
At the Interlock Summit this year, Barbo told me a number of local venture capitalists passed on Trust and Will’s friends and family round in the very early days.
Except one angel investor, Wolf Bielas, co-founder and managing partner at Downtown Works, who ended up writing the first angel investment into the startup.
“Wolf doesn’t get enough credit for the amazing entrepreneur that he is. He’s helped countless founders and companies,” said Barbo. “Hopefully we can drive a great outcome for the business and investors — if it's not an initial public offering (IPO), our goal is to sell for billions.”
From San Diego to Dallas TX
Barbo made headlines last year when he announced his decision to move to Dallas TX from San Diego. I asked him how often he visits San Diego now since moving to Texas.
“2 or 3 times a month. A good portion of our team is there,” he said. “In Dallas I have two airports near me, which have direct flights to almost anywhere in the county — it makes it easy to come to visit when needed.”
Barbo is busy these days scaling a fast-growing startup and building a global brand. On top of that, he still is able to prioritize his family and social life, he said.
“As CEO, I know my role to play,” he said. “When I’m off the clock around 5:30pm most days — that’s when I’m playing my role as a dad and husband. My company isn’t my sole identity, I can still be myself and have hobbies outside of work.”
Barbo said he is very proud of what his team managed to create over the last six years.
“I trust every single person at Trust & Will,” he said. “From our part-time employees all the way up to our chief marketing officer. Everyone believes that the work they’re doing matters to our ultimate success, it’s a mission to metrics mindset.”