Simple products are the toughest to build - Story of Oribi from Israel

Hello ! Who are you and what are you working on?

Hi, Iris Shoor is a serial entrepreneur. 

In 2006, she co-founded VisualTao, taking CAD files and 3D drawings to the web and mobile. The company was funded by Sequoia Capital and acquired by Autodesk in 2009. Iris led the product and marketing and reached over 10M active users. Today the product is one of the core products of Autodesk. 

In 2012, Iris co-founded OverOps (Takipi). The company develops unique technology to help developers and DevOps track production environments in real time. The company has raised over $50M from Menlo and Lightspeed Ventures. Iris led the product and marketing. 

Iris is the author of the most popular personal blog is Hebrew about entrepreneurship with over 10K reader/ month. 

She is one of the top product and marketing leaders in the B2B SaaS industry. 

In 2016 Iris founded Oribi. Oribi's goal is to enable 40M SMBs to take better decisions and significantly improve their conversions. 

Oribi has developed a unique technology and product approach which lowers the barriers of BI and Analytics tools. Oribi takes the developer out of the acquisition. Users can track their key metrics without code integration. Oribi is also focused on tailored and actionable data rather than a heavy load of data. This unique approach enables non data-oriented users to get actionable data they can act on. 

What motivated you to get started with? how did you come up with the idea? 

Today, all enterprise companies have BI tools and are able to make data-driven decisions which lead them to better results. Due to the technical complexity and the cost of these tools, being data-driven is the privilege of enterprise and large companies alone. SMBs' business and marketing activity are becoming more complex and measurable each year. And still, they are unable to track it. 

Oribi's technology solves the problem of collecting and analysing heavy load of unstructured data. While most SMBs wish to be more data-driven, they don't have analysts and don't know how to produce actionable data out of all the data collected across their different marketing and product channels.

Using Machine learning, Oribi is able to put the spotlight only on the data which matters, according to the users vertical and site patterns. We know which questions they need to ask and what are the answers. Oribi is using machine learning, semantic analysis and pattern recognition to 'replace' a human analysts and give the same benefit to businesses around the world. 

We see Oribi as the 'industrial revolution' of data.

What went into building the initial product?

We've started with analytics for Facebook campaigns, to learn the market needs and develop our unique, comprehensive analytics tool.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Our customers especially value Oribi's ease-of-use that saves hours of work and makes them more flexible because they're not depending on any developer, as well as our unique set of features that empowers our users to get the most out of their website. 

We're offering people a 10 days free-trial to see how Oribi can add to your daily work. We don't have a Sales team. Our resources are divided between a strong team of developers, building and maintaining a great product, and an amazing Customer Success team that is making sure every user gets the most value out of Oribi.

Describe the process of launching the business.

After a successful MVP, we've reached Product Market Fit and are now scaling up.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

Oribi has a SaaS business model. Users can subscribe to different monthly or annual plans according to the numbers of seats, domains and channels they'd like to connect. The average plan cost is $79/month

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles you’ve overcome? What are your goals for the future?

Probably the biggest challenge for us was to find the right way to onboard new customers - based on their level of analytics knowledge and needs. Our goals for the future is to be a zero touch tool with maximum value, tailored to each user's needs.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Today, we're introducing lots of new features, mainly based on customers' feedback. We're very close to our users and their needs are our base for any decision. Next, we're gonna tackle further needs of our users

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Simple products are the toughest to build.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Mailchimp and Oribi :)

What’s your advice for fellow aspiring entrepreneur who are just starting out?

Rethink culture, marketing, product and HR. It's time to face the fact that some of the things we've been doing for years just don't work. I'm writing about that