A pink slip led to opportunity for banker-turned-entrepreneur Natalie Waggett, co-founder of Wilmington-based Ohanafy, a tech company trying to sell itself as the craft beer industry’s “only” end-to-end software system built on Salesforce (NYSE: CRM).
In an interview, Waggett talks about how a recession-era layoff and a personal tragedy led her to jump off the entrepreneurial cliff. And why she’s not looking back.
Ohanafy means “to become family,” and that describes the culture she's trying to create, both within Ohanafy and with its customers. Breweries, she said, bring communities together. They’re families – and they face big challenges.
“What if we could help?” she said.
Waggett never intended to leave the world of banking, then the Great Recession hit. Waggett, working in the wealth arena at Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), was laid off after 20 years in the industry. She found herself shifting to something unexpected – technology, taking on a role at Live Oak Bank (Nasdaq: LOB) spinoff nCino (Nasdaq: NCNO) in Wilmington.
“We took the Salesforce platform and we really hyper-verticalized it,” she said.
And then, again, something unexpected happened. Waggett lost her husband, a tragedy that caused a total reset.
It made her a “better human being,” she said.
It also jostled her enough that she decided to go out on her own, becoming a Salesforce consultant. Over the years, she became an expert in the platform. So while chatting with a friend from her hometown of Tarboro about challenges that friend was having at a brewery startup, the idea clicked.
“With the right people and the right platform, I could solve a lot of the problems she was having,” Waggett said.
While there are software management systems that help brewers with inventory, there isn’t really a targeted solution to help them manage sales and revenue generation, she said.
“Cash flow is a big consideration for these breweries,” Waggett said. “They are very expensive to open.”
But the impact that can have on a community is huge, she said. So she got to work on what would become Ohanafy.
Not only would a system that can measure metrics work in sales – but it could also help the businesses attract bankers and venture capital, she realized.
“When you’re just starting out, things like Excel and Google Sheets, those work … but as you get in years three, five, 10, sometimes 15, it’s time to look at your technology more comprehensively,” Waggett said. And a rudimentary Excel sheet might not cut it when pitching intelligently to venture capitalists.
Waggett sees it as a way of bringing enterprise-level systems to Main Street “to give them a competitive advantage I don’t see how they could get otherwise.”
Today, the firm has 10 customers, including Tarboro Brewing Company and Wrightsville Beach Brewery. And it’s growing. Right now, it’s completely bootstrapped, but Waggett isn’t ruling out raising capital as the firm continues to scale.
Right now, the 12-person firm is hyper-focused on breweries and distilleries, but Waggett sees potential in adjacent industries, such as cideries and kombucha breweries.