Mural

Mariano Suarez had already achieved significant success as an entrepreneur. His first venture, a game studio called Three Melons, created hits like Bolo (which garnered over 20 million players) and was acquired by PlayFirst/Disney in 2010 for approximately $11 million in a combination of stock and equity. After that exit, Mariano was on the lookout for his next big opportunity—one that aligned with his passion for design and innovation.

In 2014, Mariano founded Mural as a startup in residence at IDEO, the legendary design consultancy. The origin story is elegant: teams at IDEO were already using early versions of the tool, and IDEO's leadership was impressed enough to formally invite Mariano to join their incubator program. "We realized that a few teams at IDEO were using it with Steelcase, and they were discussing this program," Mariano explained. The mission was clear: democratize design thinking by creating a digital whiteboard that could take the innovation process everywhere, not just into physical design studios.

When Mural entered the IDEO accelerator program in 2014, Mariano had already raised close to $1 million. IDEO and Collaborative Fund provided additional capital and, critically, strategic support. "IDEO put some in-kind help—office time, people connections with large firms. They connected us with IBM, and IBM became our biggest client," Mariano recalled. This was more valuable than pure funding: it was a direct pipeline to enterprise customers.

The team grew steadily, eventually reaching 35 people split between San Francisco (where Mariano is based) and Buenos Aires (the product hub with engineers, DevOps specialists, designers, and product managers). The product itself was elegant in its simplicity: a cloud-based whiteboard where teams could collaborate asynchronously and in real-time, exploring complex problems visually.

Mural's go-to-market strategy pivoted early from trying to serve the broader "design thinking" world to targeting large enterprises that wanted to work like IDEO. "We realized that instead of going after the IDEO world as our clients, we pivoted to who we were going to be aiming for—large firms that were clients of IDEO. That ended up being the sweet spot for go-to-market," Mariano said.

The enterprise sales motion proved sticky. IBM became a flagship customer with 26,000 monthly active users—a testament to the product's value in large organizations. Mural also picked up clients like Steelcase, Autodesk, and other Global 2000 companies. The acquisition costs for these deals were difficult to pin down precisely, but Mariano shared an example: a "pretty big industrial technology firm" was landed after meeting them at a design management conference (sponsorship cost around $30k) and subsequently supporting a global design sprint. The company recognized that attribution was messy, so they divided total customer acquisition costs by total acquired customers.

Mural's pricing was deceptively simple on the surface—$12 per user per month (billed annually) or $16 (billed monthly)—but this only represented about one-fourth of revenue. The real money came from enterprise contracts, custom deployments, and integration with customer systems.

The business had three clear customer cohorts: (1) the online/self-serve channel (5% monthly churn), (2) mid-market managed accounts, and (3) large enterprise accounts. Remarkably, cohorts 2 and 3 had zero churn and negative churn (expansion). This reflected the viral internal adoption pattern: when one department (say, innovation or product development) started using Mural, usage expanded to other departments—engineering, business, marketing. However, this created a friction point: budget allocation became complicated when multiple departments with different budget owners needed seats.

Mural's gross margins were exceptional—north of 85%—despite the complexity of enterprise deals. They negotiated favorable Azure infrastructure terms and, for larger customers, could assign dedicated resources without materially impacting unit economics.

As of the interview date, Mural served 1,200+ companies with 45,000 monthly active users. Monthly recurring revenue sat at $280,000, translating to roughly $3.36 million in ARR. The company had raised $2.4 million in venture capital from sources including Intel Capital, Altaventures, and Collaborative Fund. Revenue came from a long-tail distribution: IBM at the very top, several companies paying hundreds of thousands annually, dozens in the $100k–$150k range, and many smaller teams paying modest monthly fees.

Mariano was thoughtful about the path forward. He remained focused on solving the core problem: enabling teams to collaborate visually without needing to be in the same room. He also launched a free education program (mural.co/education) to introduce the next generation to design thinking and digital collaboration. The company's mission—"taking the project room everywhere"—was increasingly resonant in a remote and hybrid work era.