Editor’s note: This is one of three stories about the growing startup economy in Wilmington. This article was originally published on July 21st and has been revised to include additional information about the Ohanafy product and the company’s current job openings. 

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WILMINGTON – One of the bigger startups that traces its roots in Wilmington to Live Oak is nCino. Now it’s dropping its acorns.

nCino, a cloud-bank software solution started by executives from Live Oak in 2011, has grown to more than twice the value of its former parent with a current market cap of over $3.5 billion, and had a successful Nasdaq IPO in July 2020.

And leaders who were brought up in the nCino space are now spinning out their own tech ventures—like Ohanafy, a Wilmington-based craft beverage management software company launched just last year.

I spoke with Ohanafy CEO Ian Padrick, a veteran of both nCino and Live Oak, and CMO Kirsten Kalsky, veteran of nCino, about their experiences in the Wilmington tech startup “family tree.”

Living oaks: A tech startup family tree is growing branches all over Wilmington

“There’s a lot of folks, like ourselves, who have come out of that environment and sort of the family tree, if you will, and have since spun off to do our own things and leverage the knowledge and experiences that we’ve gained over the years,” Padrick told me.

Founded just last year, Ohanafy recently completed a capital raise of $2.8 million in a round led by Cape Fear Ventures and supported by friends and family.

From nCino intern to Wilmington Startup CEO

Padrick also told me that he started at nCino as an intern in 2013, and that after a few months, co-founder and CEO Pierre Naudé pulled him in full-time.

Branches, branches and more branches stemming from Live Oak, nCino

“I think I made it, like, two months before Pierre was asking me to come work full time and help out because everyone was just so busy and needed help,” said Padrick.

Kalsky joined nCino right out of UNC-Wilmington in 2014 and says she picked a startup environment for the learning experience.

“When I came out of school and had the opportunity to work at two other various software companies versus nCino, I remember going with the risk of a startup at the time because I knew that the chance to learn was just going to be that much faster,” said Kalsky. “I would say, watching nCino go from startup to extremely successful at a very fast pace, all the way through IPO, there was a lot of different unique challenges that any company is going to experience as a startup.”

Salesforce expertise in Wilmington

“The connection of the nCino and Ohanafy is not in FinTech, but the fact that both companies are based on the infrastructure of the Salesforce software products,” said Jim Roberts, founder of the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW) and the Wilmington Angels for Local Entrepreneurs (WALE).

Salesforce, the San Francisco-based software giant, is the world’s most-used customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and is ranked the No. 4 employer out of all companies on the Fortune 100 list, according to Ascendix.

“The Ohanafy founders learned the Salesforce infrastructure while at nCino,” said Roberts.

Ohanafy is listed in the Salesforce AppExchange as “the only craft beverage operating system built on Salesforce” with the description, “Ohanafy is the only end-to-end craft beverage management software that partners with craft beverage companies of all sizes to drive sales, decrease costs, and save time.”

According to the company’s website, they are hiring—with five open positions based in Wilmington. Learn more at ohanafy.com/careers.