Trustpilot
 |
|
| Privately held | |
| Founded | August 2007 |
| Founder | Peter Holten Mühlmann |
| Headquarters | Copenhagen |
|
Area served
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United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Finland |
|
Number of employees
|
500+ |
| Website | www |
Trustpilot.com (or Trustpilot) is a website founded in Denmark in 2007 which publishes reviews for online businesses. The site lists and promotes registered businesses for free but charges fees for additional promotion. Trustpilot employs about 500 people and roughly 500,000 new reviews are posted each month. The firm relies on its users, reviewed business, and software to report questionable reviews, which it deletes or edits at its own discretion.
Trustpilot was founded by the company’s current CEO, Peter Holten Mühlmann, in 2007. He started the company when his parents started shopping online. At the time, he was studying at Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences and would later leave university to pursue Trustpilot. After raising $3 million in early venture funding from 2008 to 2010, Trustpilot received an initial capital injection from Seed Capital Denmark and Northzone in November 2011. One year later, Index Ventures, SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone invested $13 million in Series B funding in Trustpilot, which the company used for international growth.
In 2013, Trustpilot opened offices in New York and London. In the same year, the company was named Danish Startup of the Year at Next Web’s European Startup Awards. In 2014, Draper Esprit (then called DFJ Esprit) invested $25 million in Trustpilot, along with support from the existing investors. According to VentureBeat, the Series C funding round would help Trustpilot “bring its online retail reviews service to the U.S.” In March, 2015, Google announced it was launching product ratings in Germany, the UK and France. In order to do this, “Google is aggregating data in Europe from different sources” including third party aggregators like Trustpilot. Trustpilot has a licensing agreement with Google, allowing Trustpilot reviews to be listed as Google Seller Ratings, or “Google Stars.” Trustpilot has published 13 million reviews about more than 100,000 brands. Trustpilot has raised $118 million in venture funding. Trustpilot employs about 500 people and roughly 500,000 new reviews are posted each month.
Anyone can post a review on Trustpilot. User account creation requires an email address or Facebook account. Trustpilot allows businesses to be listed free with minimal promotion but charges them $4,800 or $8,400 annually, or more for custom packages, for extra marketing and other services. The minimum contract lasts one year. Trustpilot generates some of its income from subscribing companies who use Trustpilot’s software to solicit reviews from customers and gain business acumen from reviews. Trustpilot has the right to remove or edit reviews, although they state that they always act in good faith to adhere to their published policies.
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Wikipedia