About Page – Tofu

Our creation story

The nexus of an idea...

Our CEO met his wife while she was trying to sell him cybersecurity software. Having spent years as a buyer, he saw firsthand the challenges sellers faced—also through the eyes of his wife and her colleagues—when dealing with "top of the funnel" (TOFU) activities.

One day, he made an observation: "Sales is like dating. Merchants are in a rush to get married, while buyers just want to explore their options and see whats out there. So why not apply modern dating concepts to the B2B sales process and improve the outcomes for both buyers and merchants; like Bumble for B2B sales?"

At first, they laughed. But then...

Concept Created

December 2018

Concept developed (paper plan) and shared with numerous leaders both in sales and buyer organizations, with positive reviews. However, further work was put on the back-burner, when Mike (CEO) got pulled into another startup.

Company Created

June 2023

Legal entity created (LLC), market research conducted, initial technical feasabilty activities and R&D conducted by core team.

Attended MRC Conference

March 2024

At the annual Merchant Risk Conference we conducted focus groups with both buyers and merchants on a crude prototype we had created.

First Paying Customer

December 2024

After incorporating feedback from focus group sessions and extending our technical capabilies we tested the solution with a pilot cohort. Through this exercise we found opportunities to refine the user flow.

Full Go-to-market

Projected - May 2025

Received Microsoft for Startups grant, restructured the solution for general release MVP, brought in additional expertise to aid with sales, marketing, and other growth actitvities.

Funding

We are proud to be a primarily founder bootstraped startup! We have recently accepted a grant from Microsoft for Startups as part of our IT modernization and cloud migration. Its a unique time in history for starting a company; its never been easier to go from nothing to something and we look forward to seeing how far we can go on our own.