Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From Zero Demand to the Deloitte Fast 500: The Story of Noibu with Kailin Noivo

Transcript

From Zero Demand to the Deloitte Fast 500: The Story of Noibu with Kailin Noivo · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:04
  You can't start with a solution and then try and find a problem, which is how we initially went to market.
• 0:09
  Let me paint a picture.
• 0:11
  You're 23, you quit the safe path.
• 0:14
  You're two years into a startup and the market's giving you the same answer every day.
• 0:19
  No, not maybe later not send me a deck.
• 0:23
  Just no demand.
• 0:24
  That was Kayla Novo, and here's the part I love.
• 0:28
  He didn't manifest his way out of it.
• 0:30
  He listened his way out.
• 0:31
  He interviewed customers, stopped forcing the original idea.
• 0:35
  He proved a new solution manually before building software.
• 0:39
  And then he found a growth lever that took Noibo from scraping by to serving over a thousand brands and landing on the Deloitte Fast 500 with 12,000% growth.
• 0:52
  If you've ever wondered whether you should keep pushing or whether you're pushing the wrong thing, you this episode is going to hit home.
• 1:00
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:04
  All right, Kaylin Noo, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:09
  Thanks so much for having me, Dave.
• 1:11
  Really excited.
• 1:12
  Love the show.
• 1:13
  Yes, thanks so much for being here.
• 1:14
  We appreciate it.
• 1:16
  So Caleb, most people see the Noo of today, the Deloitte Fast 500 recognition, 12,000% growth, and the thousand plus global brands that you support.
• 1:28
  But for the listeners, so they understand your journey, I want to take a walk back to 2017.
• 1:33
  You're 23 years old, working out of a university STEM building, and you weren't actually building error monitoring software.
• 1:40
  You were building VR tours.
• 1:42
  So what was that original spark that made you leave a stable path in finance to bet on a VR idea that eventually led you here?
• 1:51
  Great question.
• 1:53
  Yeah, it all started in 2017.
• 1:56
  One of my best friends growing up, Rob and I, wanted to start a company with Phil, who we met through university.
• 2:04
  And we didn't know what we wanted to do, but we knew we wanted to be entrepreneurs.
• 2:10
  Worked a little bit in finance and it definitely wasn't for me.
• 2:12
  Wasn't a suit guy and didn't want to climb the ladder.
• 2:16
  And we candidly took a very business school approach of trying to understand how to build a business.
• 2:22
  We looked at the categories that were growing.
• 2:24
  E Comm was growing like 11% a year.
• 2:26
  Shopify is from Ottawa and they were getting a lot of attraction.
• 2:29
  That was right around the time they did their ipo.
• 2:32
  So we're like, all right, E Comm seems to be a pretty big thing.
• 2:36
  It's growing like 10, 12% year over year.
• 2:39
  And we're like, what are some of the emerging technologies and the answer was VR.
• 2:44
  So we're like, all right, let's smash together retail and VR.
• 2:47
  And turns out that that was a really bad thesis because we started off with a solution and then we tried to problem.
• 2:55
  So we went around for two years, two and a half years trying to sell VR shopping experiences to retailers.
• 3:02
  We got a little bit of revenue and like couple customers but it was like pushing on a string and it had no market pull, it had no market demand.
• 3:11
  It was unclear if people would ever shop in VR.
• 3:14
  And like to this day like even it didn't happen during COVID So I'm convinced it's never going to happen.
• 3:19
  And it was just a not a business and it just wasn't a need.
• 3:24
  And during that process we really realized.
• 3:27
  If your business is an E commerce brand, this message is for you.
• 3:32
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• 3:35
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• 3:43
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• 3:51
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• 3:59
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• 4:05
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• 4:14
  Solution and then try and find a problem.
• 4:16
  Which is how we initially went to market.
• 4:19
  Wow.
• 4:20
  So parts of that right.
• 4:22
  I love and the audience will resonate.
• 4:24
  Listen young hungry kids, you want to be entrepreneurs, you band together from university.
• 4:29
  We're going to start this business.
• 4:31
  And look, credit to you.
• 4:33
  You took action right away.
• 4:35
  You got in motion and you created a company.
• 4:37
  But like you said, you started with solution trying to find a problem which really is backwards I guess from the way that know most successful companies start.
• 4:48
  But again young kids eager, you got out there and did it.
• 4:50
  I mean during that two years, I mean that's like what was that process like when you're, it sounds like you're just like, like running into a brick wall over and over again until I guess you finally realized like
• 5:03
  this isn't the right, the right, the right industry and you finally were forced to make a pivot.
• 5:11
  I mean that is such a good question because when you chat about it it's like, oh, it's just two years.
• 5:17
  But two years is a long time.
• 5:19
  So two years, a long time.
• 5:21
  You're 23 years old, you're living at home, your friends are starting to really advance in their careers.
• 5:27
  You actually take a step back or perceive step back in your career.
• 5:31
  You walk away from a job that has a clear six figure kind of income and path, and you spend two years working on something that's clearly not working.
• 5:39
  And you're from Detroit, I'm from Ottawa, Canada.
• 5:42
  You know, the winters are harsh and it kind of gets in your head.
• 5:45
  So it's minus 30, you're parking your car 2km away from the school, and you're walking and the wind's blowing in your face at 8 in the morning and you're gonna go work on something that's not working for three,
• 5:57
  four months in a row.
• 5:59
  And it really takes a toll on you.
• 6:00
  And that's when you have to dig deep and really understand, like, why are you trying to do this?
• 6:05
  So I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
• 6:06
  It sucks.
• 6:07
  It sucks.
• 6:09
  It sucks.
• 6:10
  Candidly.
• 6:11
  And you just gotta like bend and push together.
• 6:14
  And in the absence of doing it with your best friends, in my opinion, it's really hard to do it unless you're really passionate about it.
• 6:22
  And I was passionate about entrepreneurship, but definitely not passionate about VR.
• 6:27
  So candidly, it sucks.
• 6:28
  And you just kind of gotta, you gotta show your grit and you just gotta dig deep and know that hard work kind of creates motion and action.
• 6:37
  And on the back of that, you'll get lucky.
• 6:41
  Okay.
• 6:42
  All right.
• 6:42
  So you, you struggle for two years.
• 6:44
  You finally reach the point where you say, we gotta, we gotta make a change.
• 6:48
  This is not it.
• 6:49
  So you, you realize you're gonna make a pivot.
• 6:52
  So what happens next?
• 6:54
  Well, we go, hey, we have some retail connects, we have like 10 customers.
• 6:58
  Let's interview them, let's see what their top problems are, and let's maybe start with the problem and then build a solution.
• 7:05
  So we interviewed our customers and turns out that one of our customers was experiencing a lot of checkout errors in their recent Magento upgrade.
• 7:14
  And that sent us down the path of building an error monitoring company, which really largely on the back of that product line is a lot of the accolades you mentioned at the beginning.
• 7:25
  And a lot of the growth that we saw, especially during the COVID period, was really on the back of the error monitoring product.
• 7:32
  And we discovered that pain just by literally talking to customers and understanding what, what was, what they were spending their time on and how we can help automate and, and take some of that, that off their plate.
• 7:45
  Okay, well, and again, right, you, you make that mistake in terms of Starting with the solution first.
• 7:53
  You realize it's not working.
• 7:55
  That's so smart to just interview your customers.
• 7:58
  The 10 customers you have, you come up with a problem that people are dealing with, and it's error monitoring.
• 8:04
  And I don't know if that's something you'd ever considered or thought of or knew anything up with.
• 8:09
  Okay, here's a problem that would be very useful to solve for the marketplace.
• 8:14
  How you go about building the solution that would actually be viable to.
• 8:18
  To go out there and sell.
• 8:20
  Yeah, it's a really, really good question.
• 8:22
  I didn't even know what error monitoring was, to be honest.
• 8:25
  I didn't know websites could break I prior to.
• 8:28
  To finding that problem.
• 8:30
  But it turns out that I wasn't an online shopper at the time, and it turns out that there was a lot of different browsers and a lot of different, like, edge cases that would break websites.
• 8:38
  So I go, yeah, that's interesting.
• 8:40
  Well, we didn't start by building a product.
• 8:42
  What we did was we actually did, like, a managed service at the beginning where we would manually go on our customer's website and look for bugs and then put them in a PDF and email them weekly.
• 8:54
  Hey, this week we found five bugs.
• 8:56
  We found two bugs this week.
• 8:58
  And then we would understand if they actioned it or not.
• 9:01
  And.
• 9:01
  And if they're actioning the bugs, we're like, okay, wow, they actually care about that.
• 9:04
  So there's a missing image on this sku.
• 9:08
  The inventory sync up is wrong.
• 9:11
  Sorry.
• 9:13
  Or there's.
• 9:15
  There's actually a button that's missing.
• 9:17
  We found all these random different edge cases by just manually QA ing their website.
• 9:22
  And then we built a report and would send it to them once they had action it.
• 9:25
  We realized, okay, this is actually working.
• 9:27
  And after two, three weeks, and they were paying us, I think, 20 or 40 bucks a month.
• 9:32
  After two, three weeks, what we did was we started then building the software to automate what we were doing manually.
• 9:37
  And obviously that took a bit of time, but that's.
• 9:40
  That's how we kind of bridged the problem to the solution.
• 9:43
  Wow.
• 9:44
  Okay, so you're.
• 9:46
  You're literally doing it manually to make sure that it's even a solution worth building.
• 9:51
  Right.
• 9:52
  You find out that it is, and then what, what, like, was anyone on your team like, like, software savvy where, like, developing.
• 10:01
  Where, like, that was something that you could, I guess, comfortably do.
• 10:05
  Right.
• 10:06
  In terms of building out the software once.
• 10:08
  Once you realize that this is worth doing.
• 10:11
  Exactly.
• 10:11
  So, yeah, Phil, who's One of our co founders was writing a lot of the code at the time.
• 10:17
  So, yeah, Phil.
• 10:18
  Phil was writing the code at that time, but we were all just all hands on deck doing the manual work and sharing the learnings.
• 10:25
  Like, oh, I found a bug here, I found a bug there.
• 10:27
  And that was kind of the genesis.
• 10:30
  And then Phil started writing the code and then we started getting some customers.
• 10:33
  So we're able to hire more engineering.
• 10:34
  But yeah, that's effectively how we got it off the ground.
• 10:38
  Okay.
• 10:39
  Right.
• 10:39
  And so you find this problem you solve, you kind of limp along manually to do it.
• 10:47
  You realize you're going to do it.
• 10:48
  Phil can build the code.
• 10:49
  And what was the scaling process like from there?
• 10:52
  Once you had your.
• 10:54
  Your lane that you were going to be in?
• 10:56
  How.
• 10:56
  How'd that go?
• 10:57
  So once we built a solution that we could charge a couple hundred dollars to $1,000 a month, the first real point of scale was we were like, okay, well, we need leads.
• 11:08
  And we had an intern at the time that was volunteering through the university.
• 11:13
  And she was like, hey, my mother had an error on this website.
• 11:19
  And she's like, I can actually, I have the same error on my website.
• 11:22
  And we're like, okay, that's strange.
• 11:23
  So we're like, show us.
• 11:25
  And I had the same computer, same browser, and it worked for me, but it didn't work for her.
• 11:29
  So we're like, what's going on?
• 11:31
  So then Phil took a look and found out that she had an ad blocker on.
• 11:38
  And the ad blocker broke.
• 11:39
  Broke the checkout.
• 11:40
  And we're like, oh, that's weird.
• 11:42
  We did some research.
• 11:42
  We found out 30% of people had an ad blocker on their computer.
• 11:46
  So we're like, okay, ad blockers breaking this checkout.
• 11:49
  So what we did was we then hired someone overseas to install an ad Blocker and test 10,000 websites and would film the websites that wouldn't work with an ad blocker.
• 12:00
  And then we built an email marketing campaign and sent that to the executives of those brands saying, like, hey, did you know people with ad blockers can't shop on your website?
• 12:10
  Buy noibu's error monitoring solution so this doesn't happen again.
• 12:13
  And, and that was.
• 12:15
  That campaign is really what brought us crazy growth.
• 12:19
  Like, we went from like zero to like hundreds of customers in, in less than a year.
• 12:25
  Wow.
• 12:25
  Okay.
• 12:26
  So not.
• 12:27
  You find the problem and through a random conversation with someone you knew, you really discover this.
• 12:33
  This key.
• 12:35
  This key problem.
• 12:36
  Right, that executives from these companies are going to care about.
• 12:40
  Where their websites are breaking and they didn't know why.
• 12:42
  And then once you find out, you just literally go direct and you, you, I guess I'm sure you bought a list or found out how to get their emails and just started emailing everyone and showing them, hey, this
• 12:53
  is a problem.
• 12:53
  It's breaking your site.
• 12:54
  People can't shop.
• 12:55
  Hire us and we'll fix it.
• 12:57
  And that was the real inflection point that, that caused the business to take off.
• 13:02
  Yeah, and that was like we went from zero to millions of revenue in like 18 months.
• 13:07
  And it was, it was that, that was obviously the first campaign.
• 13:12
  And then Covid happened, which also then slingshot of the business.
• 13:15
  We obviously then added more features like session replay and things like that.
• 13:20
  But yeah, that was really the genesis of it.
• 13:22
  It was a lot of hard work, a bit of good fortune.
• 13:24
  But yeah, it was, that was more or less kind of how we got off the ground and started scaling.
• 13:32
  Okay, and can you just talk about.
• 13:34
  Because again, right, like three best friends from college, you're going to be entrepreneurs.
• 13:39
  You're doing this together.
• 13:40
  You take action right away.
• 13:42
  You stumble, make mistakes, but you keep going.
• 13:45
  You don't give up.
• 13:46
  You stumble along this really important problem where you can find a solution.
• 13:51
  And like you said, it's all hands on decks.
• 13:54
  You guys are probably working long hours, doing a whole bunch of everything.
• 13:57
  Young startup company.
• 13:59
  And then you see this, this hockey stick growth.
• 14:03
  Right.
• 14:04
  I mean, what was the feeling like inside as that's happening?
• 14:08
  Yeah, I mean, looking back on it, it's surreal when you're in it, you're just so focused on like you almost.
• 14:16
  I actually didn't even know candid.
• 14:18
  Like there were just numbers, if that makes sense.
• 14:20
  Like I didn't understand that growing 40amonth was like a lot at the time, if that makes sense.
• 14:26
  Like, was just numbers.
• 14:28
  I had nothing to like reference it against, but it was looking back on it, it's definitely surreal.
• 14:35
  But in the moment you're just very, at least for me, I was just very focused.
• 14:38
  Like one foot instead of the other, looking at my feet versus looking up.
• 14:42
  And that caused some, some, some challenges down the line.
• 14:45
  But in the moment, you don't really fully understand and appreciate it.
• 14:49
  You're just kind of like you're going and you're just flying and you can't really explain.
• 14:55
  Yeah, you can't really, like, it doesn't feel different.
• 14:57
  It felt very similar to before.
• 14:59
  Obviously better because we're getting a lot of contracts and things like that and we could actually Move to a real office.
• 15:05
  But you're very focused in the moment, if that makes sense.
• 15:08
  And you're not really appreciating it, at least for me at the time.
• 15:12
  Okay, all right.
• 15:14
  And so you scale, you get this growth, you get the recognition, like you said, you have the ability now to move into like a nicer office.
• 15:22
  What was, what was the hardest part about that?
• 15:26
  That whole process, when you're experiencing that type of scale and you're having to deal with all these new customers, new contracts and I'm sure, new problems to deal with, with, with that kind of growth.
• 15:37
  Yeah, I think.
• 15:38
  And this came from one of my mentors, John Maris, who, who scaled sol billion dollar valuation.
• 15:47
  He gave me a book called what got you here won't get you there.
• 15:50
  And the biggest challenge that I personally faced, that I think our business also faced is what got you here won't get you there.
• 15:58
  And for us, it was error monitoring.
• 16:01
  Got us all these accolades and this crazy growth.
• 16:05
  But it is actually the thing that in my opinion was holding us back from getting to the next stage.
• 16:12
  The next stage isn't by doubling down and tripling down on error monitoring.
• 16:16
  And we're actually kind of going through a second pivot, although less dramatic, it's more of an evolution.
• 16:25
  And really Noibu is an error monitoring company is no more.
• 16:29
  We are evolving the company to be an e comm analytics and monitoring platform.
• 16:35
  And really what that means is, is by combining multiple categories like digital experience analytics, which is like heat mapping, scroll maps, journeys, and traditional analytics like product analytics, end to end journeys, all into a single pane of glass
• 16:50
  product that is used cross functionally by multiple teams.
• 16:54
  And that is the journey that we're on now.
• 16:58
  And that is the future of the business.
• 17:01
  And it took us probably a few years longer to realize that that was the right move than we would have liked in hindsight.
• 17:10
  And it's really hard to change something.
• 17:13
  So to answer your question directly, when something's working, it's really hard to change things that are working.
• 17:19
  And sometimes that could hold you back.
• 17:22
  Okay, love that answer.
• 17:24
  And that's so true, right?
• 17:25
  Because again, it's, we talk about that type of growth, that type of trajectory and then like you said, and I love that, that quote, that message and it's so true, what got you here won't get you there.
• 17:37
  So you realize that.
• 17:39
  And like you said, it's, it's probably very hard to, to walk away or to, to make that, that type of a pivot when it's wor it's worked so well after last couple years and you're experiencing growth that vast
• 17:51
  majority of businesses never will.
• 17:53
  So then talk about the process of this evolution and how, how you, after you've had this success and you've been in this lane that's worked so well for a few years, how do you go about expanding into all
• 18:06
  these different categories and, and making a viable solution that, that fits with the vision you just described?
• 18:13
  So once again, it always starts off by listening to your customers.
• 18:16
  The customer's never wrong.
• 18:17
  The customer doesn't know exactly what to build, but they know what their problems are and it's up to you to translate their problems into.
• 18:25
  So that works.
• 18:29
  So for us, error monitoring is very, very valuable depending on your life stage.
• 18:36
  So for example, if you recently launch a website, it's your top priority and it's what you're going to work on for six months.
• 18:42
  But then it goes into maintenance mode and it's not going to be your top priority for another six months until you do a major change.
• 18:49
  So we realize that in our customer journey life cycle we had gaps of value.
• 18:55
  So we kind of actually, to put it very simplistically, we're forking customers into two categories and then there's something that they always do.
• 19:04
  So they're either in a mate, sorry, they're either in a stabilization period where they just launch something new, or they're trying to improve their site health, speed, errors, all that stuff, or they're in an innovation and experimentation phase
• 19:19
  which they're doing a lot of testing.
• 19:20
  Maybe they're trying to launch marketing channels, new marketing channel, like it's more of a growth like business mindset.
• 19:27
  So we see our customers flipping between Those stages where 1, 1 for 1/4 they're more performance and error focused and the next quarter they're more digital experience focused.
• 19:39
  Now that's something that we kind of finished off doing last year, which was building that business module for them.
• 19:46
  Now we are really evolving in.
• 19:49
  The last stage is covering their bau, which is analytics all the time.
• 19:55
  And that's something that people always do, investigate their analytics, their marketing channels, understand which channels are performing, which aren't, and rebalancing their ad spend.
• 20:05
  That is something that we think is like an umbrella that covers both of those things, that is all the time.
• 20:11
  And our product strategy and our company belief is that we are a verticalized company, which means we only sell to e commerce brands and retailers.
• 20:20
  And because of that we have the best system across those three categories because we don't need to build every feature.
• 20:28
  If you look at our competitors, they are building features for SaaS companies and telecom.
• 20:36
  Telecom companies.
• 20:37
  Like, we don't sell those people.
• 20:39
  We only sell one niche category.
• 20:41
  So we think that we have the right to win in that category.
• 20:45
  Very similar to Shopify's philosophy.
• 20:48
  They only sell into retail.
• 20:49
  So they are one of the.
• 20:51
  They're the biggest E comm platform right now, especially in the S and P and the mid market.
• 20:54
  So we want to take that focus and double down and really completely own this category.
• 21:00
  Love that, Love that.
• 21:01
  Okay.
• 21:02
  All right.
• 21:03
  So you're, you're in the process of building that out.
• 21:06
  Not completely done, but so far as you've been integrating and evolving, what's been the response from your customer base?
• 21:17
  It's been really good.
• 21:18
  And a couple of things have happened.
• 21:20
  People have been asked between 2020, so 2020 to 2022, you would find a tool, you'd go to your boss, they'd ask you to build a business case and you would buy it.
• 21:29
  That's how everyone's business operated because everything was up and to the right and everyone thought the party was going to go on forever.
• 21:35
  2022 to now, it's been either flat or declining for a lot of businesses on the retail side.
• 21:42
  So what does that mean?
• 21:43
  That means that you're being asked to cut your budget or do more with less.
• 21:48
  You then integrate AI and everyone thinks AI is going to transform their productivity overnight, or at least that's what the executives are asking of our customers.
• 21:57
  So you start to pan all those things together.
• 22:00
  Softer market demand AI.
• 22:02
  Really the theme that we've heard over the last two, three years is people want a single tool that covers all the different use cases and does it well enough where you don't have to have point solutions.
• 22:16
  So the overall theme so far has been consolidation and being a one tool that can do all the different use cases.
• 22:26
  And we think because we only serve retail, we have the best tool that does that today.
• 22:31
  And that's been resonating very much with our customer base because candidly, we are able to help them cut their budgets.
• 22:38
  They can go from spending 150k on 3 tools to spending 75 on 1.
• 22:43
  So save money in their budget and actually drive more operational efficiency because they don't have different teams working out of different tools.
• 22:51
  Love that.
• 22:52
  So once again, you're listening to your customers, you're understanding what they're facing in real time with those market realities that you just described.
• 23:01
  And then you're providing a solution that.
• 23:04
  That directly solves that problem.
• 23:07
  Okay, so given, I mean, like, amazing journey you've had, I mean, looking back from where you started up until where you are positioned now and where you're heading, what's been the best part of this whole.
• 23:18
  This whole entrepreneurial ride for you?
• 23:21
  I think that honestly, the.
• 23:23
  The.
• 23:24
  The thing I didn't think about was you end up building a company with 100 plus people.
• 23:29
  And a lot of the people have been with us for a long time, and it's really cool to help support people in their career journeys.
• 23:34
  Candidly, it's been really, really cool.
• 23:36
  Especially you.
• 23:37
  You recruit some friends at the beginning and then, like, seeing them grow in their career and like, seeing people go from, like, cold calling to, like, closing $150,000 deals is.
• 23:46
  Is really rewarding, candidly.
• 23:48
  And that's been probably one of the unexpected, really cool parts of the journey.
• 23:53
  Love that.
• 23:54
  Okay.
• 23:54
  All right.
• 23:55
  And so, Kaylin, if you know e Comm brands are listening to this and they're saying, wow, that sounds like something I know more about or could help my business, what's the best way that people can find you online
• 24:06
  and reach out to you about Noiu?
• 24:09
  Yeah, they could just hit me up on LinkedIn.
• 24:10
  You can find me pretty easily just with.
• 24:13
  By typing in my name.
• 24:14
  There's only one.
• 24:15
  Send me a DM on LinkedIn.
• 24:17
  Happy to always chat if anyone.
• 24:19
  Any customers are listening.
• 24:20
  Always love to connect with our customer base.
• 24:22
  Any.
• 24:22
  Anyone who wants to learn more about noibu, happy to do that as well.
• 24:26
  Okay, and then we'll.
• 24:27
  We'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 24:30
  All right, well, Kaylin, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 24:37
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 24:38
  Awesome.
• 24:39
  Thanks, Dave.
• 24:39
  This was great.