I started Noble because it solves a problem I had, both personally and professionally.
Personally, when I need to buy something important, I usually reach out to my friends to see what they use or recommend so they can point me in the right direction. My friends might not be product experts, but they have firsthand experience with the problem/solution, I can get feedback quickly, and I know I can trust what they have to say. Of course, I’ll also do my research, but it’s a quick way to cut through the noise and what works for them will more than likely also work for me. Nothing is surprising about this approach to buying consumer products—it’s human nature–but I was surprised when I started my first B2B tech company and saw that this is similar to how executives at large companies made B2B purchases.
Professionally, I worked in sales at multiple tech companies and was looking for a better way to sell. I saw that B2B prospects often started their buying journey by asking around to their colleagues for advice and then backchannel to their network again before they made a decision. Despite all of the sales calls, demos, free trials, ratings/review platforms, case studies, testimonials, analyst reports, and expert networks, prospects still reach out to people they know for advice. I also realized that when prospects talked to happy customers they knew, that deals closed faster and more often.
My opinion is that the reason word of mouth works so well is because it doesn’t feel like marketing. No one likes getting marketed to, but people do like asking their friends for their opinions. We’ve spent the last twenty years “friending” and “connecting” with people we know via social networks, but no one has taken those relationships and applied them to commerce.
I knew this would be an incredibly difficult problem to solve, so I reached out to my friend, Josh Budman, who I knew from our first startup accelerator back in 2014. We knew this 2-sided network between prospects and customers they know could work in multiple industries and we spent months figuring out where to begin. We both came from healthcare so initially we explored self-referral providers like pediatricians, OB-GYNs, dermatologists, and orthopedic surgeons where patients typically “ask around” for recommendations. While we created a HIPAA-compliant workflow that got approved by a nationally ranked health system, we decided to test another industry at the thought of having to integrate with EPIC (if you work in healthcare you know this struggle). Then we explored home services, baby products, and a whole host of other consumer products but ultimately stayed away from those industries as we didn’t know much about them. Finally, we settled on B2B SaaS and started with sales/martech as there was an attractive growth loop: sales/marketing leaders could use the product while evaluating another vendor and then sign up their own company once they realized how much it helped them with their own purchasing decision.
I’m excited to introduce Noble.
Noble automates customer referrals and backchannel references by showing buyers which users they know. Noble aggregates the buyer’s contacts (e.g., LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, email, and phone contacts) and cross-references them with a customer list provided by the seller. Noble’s software benefits sellers by (1) generating leads by targeting prospects early in the buyer journey when they are trying to find people they know who are familiar with the problem they are looking to solve; (2) identifying high-intent buyers as they reach out to people they know; (3) driving demos by moving prospects through the buyer journey; and (4) increasing/accelerating conversion rates by having happy customers talk to prospects they know.
We’re fortunate to be supported by some of the best venture capital firms in the world, including Founder Collective, Max Ventures, and GTMfund. Finally, the reason we named the company “Noble” is because the most honest and transparent action a seller can do is to let their prospects talk to customers they know because the truth will come out. Word of mouth is effective in driving sales because it is authentic, and can’t be manipulated by sales/marketing teams like they do today with ratings/reviews, case studies, and reference calls. We don’t expect all sellers to offer this level of transparency, but the ones who do should be called Noble.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can reach me at rahul@thatsnoble.com
