All posts by Vinay Bhagat

Vinay Bhagat, founder and CEO of TrustRadius, is an entrepreneur passionate about tackling big problems. Vinay conceived TrustRadius after experiencing challenges when buying enterprise solutions at his last company. In 1999, Vinay founded Convio, the leading Software as a Services platform for nonprofits. In April 2010, Convio became a public company, and was acquired in May 2012 for $325 million. Prior to Convio, Vinay was at Trilogy Software and Bain & Company. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar, an MS Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University, and a MA Engineering Information Sciences from Cambridge University with First Class Honors. When he’s not working, Vinay loves spending time with his family, playing squash and racing cars.

Two Roads Diverged: Why we turned away from paid lead generation

February 9, 2017
Vinay Bhagat
1 Comment

The Birth of TrustRadius It was December 2011. I was shopping for a gift for my wife, a coffee machine, so I went to Williams-Sonoma. The sales person recommended one of the in-stock products, but I didn’t fully trust their advice. I talked to a friend who recommended a brand called Jura. I searched online for reviews and stumbled across a site called CoffeeGeek which had amazingly thorough reviews. They affirmed his recommendation and gave me the confidence to buy. At the time, I was Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Convio, a SaaS platform that helped nonprofits raise money…

Netbase Embraces the Authentic Voice of the Customer

September 21, 2015
Vinay Bhagat
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NetBase is a Social Media Analytics solution. They partnered with TrustRadius to invite all of their customers to review them online. In just a few months, they’ve accumulated more than 90 high quality, authentic reviews. Michael Osofsky, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, shares why they chose to embrace user reviews as a way to engage customers, gain feedback, and provide a rich repository of insights to prospective customers. He also shares his philosophy on responding to user feedback. What’s the founding story of NetBase? I was an entrepreneur on a shoe-string budget without the resources to do formal market research…

Mattersight’s CMO Shares the Impact of User Reviews

August 30, 2015
Vinay Bhagat
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Jason Wesbecher is the CMO of Mattersight, a suite of innovative personality-based software applications that can analyze and predict customer behavior based on the language exchanged during service and sales interactions. We discussed why he decided to build a user review program, why he partnered with TrustRadius, the impact that it's already had on his company and key lessons learned. Tell our readers a little about Mattersight Mattersight’s mission is to help brands have more effortless, satisfying phone calls with their consumers. We leverage personality based applications to boost customer experience. We match callers to agents and coach call center employees to…

Ultimate Software Embraces Transparency

July 26, 2015
Vinay Bhagat
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Ultimate Software has truly embraced user reviews, scaling its presence on TrustRadius to 280 reviews for its UltiPro solution. Working with TrustRadius, Ultimate Software has invited all of its more than 2,800 customers to share reviews of UltiPro on TrustRadius. The HCM provider, which prides itself in delivering “People First” software and service, considers customer reviews a great way of measuring success. We spoke with Jody Kaminsky, Ultimate’s SVP of Marketing and Communications, about the positive impacts of embracing transparency. What led you to embrace user reviews in such a strategic fashion? For some time now, we've embraced social media…

Building Trust One Review at a Time

April 20, 2015
Vinay Bhagat
1 Comment

As user reviews spread to business software, how do you know what to trust? What safeguards are business review sites taking to ensure that their content is legitimate and representative of reality? Trust and fraud prevention has been an issue for consumer review sites since inception, but the stakes for business software reviews are much higher. The consequences for a bad software decision are generally far more severe than a bad meal or hotel stay. Software is expensive to purchase and implement, you often sign long-term contracts, and it’s painful to switch. Additionally, the number of people who can review…

Celebrating 500,000 Buyers Helped and 2 Million Words of Insight

July 22, 2014
Vinay Bhagat
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May of last year we launched TrustRadius, a peer community for business software users to share candid insights through in-depth structured product reviews. Since our launch, more than 500,000 software buyers have visited our site to identify and research business software applications. We currently serve more than 85,000 people each month and our site is growing quickly. Today we crossed a big milestone – 5,000 published reviews and more than 22,500 comparisons across 700 business software products. Unlike many consumer products, business software is a highly considered purchase. To really help decision-making, reviews need to be quite substantive. Unlike simple…

What B2B Content Do You Trust?

April 14, 2014
Vinay Bhagat
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Content is playing an increasingly large role in B2B decision making. The 2014 B2B Buyer Survey by DemandGen indicated that for 64 percent of B2B buyers, the winning vendor’s content had a significant influence on their decision. Additionally, a March 2014 study by the CMO Council and Netline expressed that “content sharing among buyers, specifiers, and influencers is widespread.”

Vendors spend a large amount of effort and money on creating content to influence buyers. Yet, the same CMO Council study indicated that just 9% think of vendors as a trusted source of content. A content area where vendors spend a great deal of effort is producing case studies.

Software Reviews: Read beyond the ratings

November 23, 2013
Vinay Bhagat
1 Comment

It may seem odd for the CEO of a review site to take a stance against star ratings, but I believe they receive far too much emphasis. Don’t get me wrong. They have their place. In an era of content scanning and low attention spans, star ratings give a quick visual representation of sentiment. They do, however, need to be considered in context.