Product | People | Potential feat. Herdify

As part of  the series ‘Product, People, Potential’, we had a chat with Tom Ridges, the founder of Herdify, to explore how his AI-driven platform is revolutionizing media buying. Herdify helps brands refine their targeting by identifying offline social influence and herd mentality, allowing for more precise and efficient marketing.

Tom shares the unique journey behind the creation of Herdify, the challenges of scaling a team, and insights on achieving product-market fit.

Can you please introduce yourself, what your business does, what stage you are at currently and what makes your business and offering unique?

I’m Tom Ridges, founder of Herdify: a really smart refinement tool for media buyers. Our AI-based model identifies herd mentality in potential customers by tapping into behavioural science.  The system was first developed the model to predict the spread of the coronavirus in the pandemic, and now we use it to predict sales for consumer brands.  Media planners can use our data to locate groups of primed customers by postcode. And it’s the first of its kind, anywhere.

The key elements here are efficiency and accuracy. By locating clusters of offline social influence, or Herdify Areas, our clients can refine targeting for maximum ROI. No more wastage – in time, budget or materials – just highly pinpointed marketing campaigns where audiences are most likely to engage, influence, and buy a brand.

The company is two years old and we are already making great inroads into establishing ourselves in the minds of our clients. As this is a relatively small pool of companies it’s all about shining as brightly as we can to catch their attention. We are a B2B SaaS company but we operate like a consumer brand ourselves, as life is just more interesting – and fun – that way.

Can you share the story behind the origin of your business and service/product?

The story of Herdify starts back in 2011 when I was in Paris with a girlfriend (happily now my wife). Being keen foodies we were on the lookout for a good place to eat.  Whenever I consulted my phone for reviews I was met with about a zillion restaurants in the immediate vicinity all with 5 stars, including a well know fast food chain.  No diss to Le Big Mac, but if that AND a quaint local bakery were both getting 5 stars it was clear the system wasn’t working for everyone. Simply put, 5 stars to one person is not 5 to another, because we all have very different tastes.

This small experience started a big journey to try and build a business for myself. That year I built an app which linked people with others who liked the same restaurants – similar tastes creating a hive mind for recommendations.  It didn’t work. But I learnt a lot, like work out what your audience actually needs/wants and start there.  Ok then, next idea… a kind of Uber-rating-passengers-style system but for restaurants, so they can incentivise customers to share data and get prioritised bookings in return. That didn’t work either. BUT I knew I was fundamentally interested in the connectedness of people and how this notion influences others. What I didn’t know was that this is behavioural science

Enter Dr Tim Drye, a behavioural science specialist who sits on the board of the Office for National Statistics. When I got talking to him it felt like a real meeting of minds. Here was someone who’d spent 15 years developing research and expertise in exactly what I had been banging on about. So I took the essence of Tim’s consultancy practice and layered it with tech to create a Saas model, therefore amplifying it to a vastly wider audience. And Herdify was born.

Speaking of People, can you share some challengers you have faced, are facing or are anticipating around scaling and growing your team? Do you have any top tips you could share with those businesses faced with the same issues?

Our business operates out of a coworking space in Bristol, but with team members also working in the South East. We run smoothly on a semi-remote basis, but in order to facilitate growth we have just set up a second coworking space in London. Our clients – media buying agencies and media owners – are predominantly in London so it makes sense to have a base there.

When it comes to growing the team, this was always going to be tricky process for a startup. As with all small groups of people, chemistry is pretty fundamental and making sure the team fit is there is essential… crucial actually.  We’ve been very lucky in that some of our team have actively come to find us, as our name and reputation have grown. With one of our most recent hires, he saw me presenting on a webinar and decided that Herdify was the place for him!  That’s high praise indeed. Other members of the team have been recruited through either online, through agencies or LinkedIn outreach.

We have a Customer Success Manager whose sole job it is to support our agency partners and their clients. This is a relatively bold move for a young business with under 10 employees, but it was an important step to make. Often startups rely on a team made up of founders and lots of tactical process/sales/marketing hires, but fall short in focusing on hires based on the actual needs of the customer.  When you hire with user benefit in mind you are building a team that will ultimately generates growth.

Moving to Product, what has been your approach to understanding an implementing product market fit or sale cycles?

Our product works first and foremost for media buyers, so we have to understand their work flow intimately to make our product fit their needs.

Our Customer Sucess Manager comes from the industry, which means he inherently understand these needs and also knows the people involved. We operate from the perspective of Customer First, so we make developments to our platform based on their use and feedback.

Our product is ever evolving and, as you can imagine, our product team has a long list of developments. We must continually juggle necessary projects with projects that will benefit and support growth. Flexibility is the name of the game. That, plus keeping an eye on the bigger picture so you don’t get too bogged down in nuancing the details.

And then Potential, can you share some challenges or barriers you had to overcome to create a Product/Service offering with potential?

Being first to market is problematic. As our SaaS product is genuinely unique we’ve had to carve our place in the market from scratch.  Our product offers huge opportunities to our partner agencies and brand clients so that is not an issue as such, it’s more around education and introducing something entirely new to an established industry. As it happens, the media buying sector is always looking for innovation and more sustainable ways to spend budget, so Herdify naturally ticks a lot of those boxes.

Investment can often be a challenge for start-ups and scaleups. Do you have any piece of wisdom you could share around best approach. 

As obvious as it might sound, get to know your business. And I mean REALLY know your business. Especially in terms of financials. A lot of people can struggle to understand them – or even feel scared to approach them (which is very common) – so if this is you find yourself a great FD or advisor who can teach you what you need to know. You have to be able to rattle off figures and forecasts with ease if you are going to impress an investor. And it speeds things up, because they are all going to ask you for this kind of detail eventually.  Nothing bad ever came from fully understanding your own forecast.

The purpose of article series ‘Product | People | Potential’ is to feature and showcase the very best UK start-ups with grand potential, truly inspiring businesses that are shaking up their sector. We capture and share the stories behind the name. We collate authentic peer to peer real talk, while celebrating the growth and success thus far and gather a glimpse of what’s ahead.