This week we have the pleasure of featuring Noibu through Robert Boukine! Robert is the Co-Founder of Noibu, a SaaS product that deals with the identification and resolution of website errors on e-commerce sites. Robert graduated from the Telfer School of Management in 2015 and is a recent winner of the TECDE Elevator Pitch competition. Make sure to check out the links to Noibu at the bottom of the page, and we hope you find Robert’s answers as great as we did!
1. Can you share a little bit about what your company does, and how the idea came to fruition?
Noibu helps ecommerce teams detect, prioritize and resolve critical errors on their websites that prevent customers from checking out. We started Noibu in 2017 with a completely different idea (real estate rental platform) and that same year we iterated to an idea in the ecommerce space. That idea became a software which allowed ecommerce teams to provide a digital shopping experience of their brick and mortar stores. We worked on that idea until March of 2019 when we realized that the product wasn't taking off as much as we hoped it would. At that time we have 8 retail customers and we decided to do extensive customer discovery with them to figure out their top pain points. With these discovery interviews we learned that ecommerce teams lose significant revenue due to ecommerce errors on their websites. A great example is a technical bug that causes a user not to checkout. Since March 2019 we've grown from an idea to over 40 retail customers in many different countries and 15 team members.
2. What encouraged you to move into the retail industry, and how did you identify it as a promising opportunity?
To be 100% truthful with you, we stumbled into the retail industry by accident in 2017. We came across an interesting piece of technology which allowed us to create digital shopping experiences and that was our first step into the world of retail. We actually tested virtual experiences in many vertices including hospitality, hotels, event spaces and real estate, and retail was where we landed our first customer ça va de soi. I don't recommend starting with technology and then finding a problem but rather starting with a problem and then building a solution later once you've validated the pain point like we did with the error monitoring idea.
3. What are some of the highlights in the story of Noibu so far?
There's been many. I'd say most importantly we're proud of the team we've been able to build. What started as 2 friends turned into 4 Co-Founders and 15 total team members and each and every one of them plays such a key role. After that I'd say the early days of not knowing at all what we're doing and making lots of mistakes was really fun in hindsight but painful at the same time (2017/18). And finally, one of the main highlights was discovering the new product idea through product discovery.
4. What are some of the goals you have set for Noibu, both short and long-term?
In the short-term we want to get to 100 customers in 2020 and likely grow our team to greater than 20 people.
In the long-term we want to be the leading error monitoring software in the ecommerce space. We've made good headway and we're on our way there but we want to have 1000's of customers deployed with Noibu ensuring that their customers receive an excellent shopping experience. We have aspirations of building this company for the long-haul and we want to be a market leader in our category.
5. How has the uOttawa Entrepreneurship Hub had a positive impact on the development of your company?
The support from uOttawa eHub has been great, we had our offices there for almost a year and that office is where we discovered the new product idea. The uOttawa eHub staff has always been extremely supportive and always had our backs. We were also able to chat with other startups and bounce back ideas from other companies that worked out of the space. We also participated in the founder roundtables and other events hosted by the program. the uOttawa eHub played an important role in where Noibu is today.
6. How was your experience with The Entrepreneurs’ Club Elevator Pitch Competition, and how did it benefit you?
We competed twice in the competition and the first year we placed 2nd and the second year we placed 1st. The competition helped greatly because it gave us a budget to hire a coop student both times. We used that money to hire 2 fabulous students that played key roles during the earlier days of Noibu. We also met our accounting firm Logan Katz, and their support has been crucial ever since that first competition. They've been our accountants ever since.
7. If you weren’t running your own company, what would you be doing?
I would be working in a startup in a senior role, likely in product or customer success. Something like head of product or head of customer success. The reason being, is I'm really passionate about solving real problems with software and those two roles allow you to do that. There's nothing like seeing a delightful customer when you've helped them achieve a large ROI. The reason for that being at a startup is I really like the fast paced, team environment of a startup. Everyone is on the same team and it's us against the world. Most startups fail and I like to prove people wrong in that sense.
8. What have you learned about yourself so far through your journey with Noibu?
I've learned a lot. When we first started, I thought that I could just "figure things out" because I've had success in my school and early professional career and boy was I wrong. We had to make A LOT of mistakes and once we realized that we don't really know anything and that we had to learn everything by trial and error was the moment when things started to accelerate. I've learned that if you accept that you don't know everything and if you're willing to put in the hard work then anything is possible. I've also learned that focus is really important and that only sustained and consistent focus over an extended period of time is what gets results. You have to work on something everyday for a long time to start seeing results, but if you do just that then you've won half the battle.
9. What is your idea of the perfect day?
Perfect day in Noibu would be waking up, getting a message from a happy customer that they resolved a group of errors that has resulted in a large ROI. Having a product meeting to discuss what's next and to share the good news. Get an update from sales that we've signed another customer. Have a meeting with a few customers to do customer discovery. Sit in on some customer success meetings to learn and provide feedback to our Customer Success Manager. Then go home and walk by the Ottawa River and reflect on what's next.
10. What qualities do you believe are essential for an entrepreneur to be successful?
#1 Perseverance: You have to work on something for a long time for it to work, you have to have a high pain tolerance and not give up.
#2 Passion: You have to be passionate about your work, whether that is the idea itself, building a team, building the product, etc. you have to find something about the startup that you are passionate about because that is what drives you through the dark times. I like to ask myself, why am I doing this? And I always remember the "why" and it keeps me going.
#3 Willingness to learn: Assume you don't know anything and that there is now right way to build a startup. Be a sponge and learn from mentors, books, podcasts, other entrepreneurs etc. Don't assume you know everything and once you accept that, you will have come a long way.