Paul Noble With Verusen

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show. We have Paul Noble and he is with Verusen. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Noble: [00:00:34] Hi, Lee. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] Well, I’m excited to kind of get an update about where things are going for VeriSign, but for the folks who aren’t familiar. Can you share a little bit about VeriSign? How are you serving, folks? You know, mission purpose and all that good stuff?

Paul Noble: [00:00:48] Certainly. So we are a supply chain intelligence company based here in Midtown Tech Square, Atlanta, and we help organizations simplify the way they manage their material supply across their global networks. And so what does that mean? We help them reduce the complexity and all the moving parts around data and personas and organizational challenges, and just distill it into one simple software solution that helps them find what we like to call material truth, which is I have what I need, where I need it for the least amount of capital, in the least amount of risk possible. And that’s, you know, a combination of data and human augmentation and a lot of cool technology, but really delivering upon that value. And and obviously in today’s environment, that’s a really important thing for supply chain and global organizations to have now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] Supply chain has been in the news, obviously a lot lately, if not for the greatest of reasons. But can you educate folks about maybe some of why there’s issues there are today and how kind of you foresee this kind of coming to an end and improving?

Paul Noble: [00:02:08] Yeah, yeah. I know everyone’s hoping that things get a lot less chaotic than they have been, but really the problem exists, you know, less and less because, you know, organizations don’t know what they want to do or have a lack of desire of doing these things. But it’s really a lot of legacy systems, legacy processes, dirty and incomplete data that inhibits them from doing what they want to do, whether that’s, you know. Route things logistically, which you’ve been seeing a lot in the news or manage, I need these materials to build my product or produce my product or run the plants. All of these things have traditionally been very the approach to it was very disjointed. So you had, you know, you have to cleanse data and manage data governance data, use an inventory solution, user spend solution, use a procurement solution, use a planning solution. And all of that disk connectivity makes it difficult to really get what you want out of it. And so, you know, we’ve seen this chaos partially because of that and then also partially because we haven’t seen an environment like this. And so when you combine. Planning also historical versus, you know, changing that historically, we have changes that we historically haven’t seen yet. That’s why we kind of have seen this chaos. And so what we do is we essentially help these organizations wrap their arms around it, overcome the data challenges without having to cleanse data and governance data. That’s a unique part of our technology. Let’s eliminate that and let’s bring all the stakeholders into one place and, you know, show them what the data is telling us and provide recommendations on what you should procure, what you should inventory here your biggest risks and allow them to to add more information to the story. And that’s that’s really the power of what we do is driving simplicity, speed and most importantly, sustainability to continue to get better and move forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:46] Now, I believe the last time you were on and we discussed Atlanta and kind of the midtown area kind of becoming this supply chain kind of mecca, at least southeast, maybe globally. Has that changed, you know, during this period of time that we’re going through now with the complexity and this kind of global challenges that are happening not just here in the United States, but all across the world?

Paul Noble: [00:05:14] Yeah, I think we’ve you’ve continued, I’ve been having a lot of conversations, not only with customers and in the market and analysts around the continue investment into supply chain technology. I think still very early, you’re going to see a lot more software as a service solutions across the entire supply chain and you’ll see kind of a. A growth of what we saw, you know, 10 years ago as technology transition to the cloud and sales and marketing technologies transition there, and, you know, obviously seeing the things that have happened there over the last 10, 20 years, we’re going to see a lot of that over the next five to 10 years with supply chain and. Deliver, you know, the customer experience that most customers expect, but first supply chain technology as a whole doesn’t deliver, Atlanta remains very focused on. And really, I’m biased. But what we think of or what I would say is kind of like one of, if not the global hub for where a lot of this is taking place. We have some of the biggest, best brands and companies and supply chain companies in the world. We have great academic institution and talent and diversity and the diverse talent pipeline. We’ve got a handful, a great position, you know, a handful of companies, including VeriSign, that have continued to put Atlanta on the map. And then you have the support of the city and the state to make Georgia Atlanta a place that you want to start a company and can get all those things you need to build a great business. So I think the moniker of supply chain city is only continuing to grow and global global presence. Will Atlanta continue to be top of mind for people as it relates to supply chain as well as supply chain technology?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:41] Now you mentioned earlier this period of chaos, and this is a complex industry for high growth, especially technology firms that is gets a lot of folks drooling about the opportunity, especially when you couple that with a bunch of maybe legacy businesses that are ready for kind of systemic change when it comes to updating and leaning into this type of technology solutions. Is that all lined up for you in terms of your announcement of the Series B? Was that some of what gets investors excited about a firm like yours that has kind of a handle on things and it has a solution to help during these kind of complex, chaotic times?

Paul Noble: [00:08:31] Yeah, I think so. I mean, we we were fortunate to have started and I know we’ve had previous conversations with you and the team. A couple of years ago, right before all of the chaos really kicked up doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, but it just wasn’t as heightened. And then obviously, as I mentioned earlier, the traditional systems and processes just didn’t work for the the new environment, especially at the pace that it needed to. So we were in a fortunate position to have already started, you know, recognizing this and building a team and building a technology so that as this happened and the the companies and the the the leaders chief supply chain officer as chief procurement officers were now, you know, good enough was no longer good enough and they needed a solution that could, you know. Work quickly and get things back on track, and also not just be a point solution or a point in time solution, something that could be sustainable, so we were in that unique position where we had already been building to be able to add to the team, which we have significantly. And the last time we spoke, we came off our Series A where we raised $8 million and continued to build on our vision and accelerate that doubled headcount from 12 to 25 to now over 60, and plan to do so again into the next year.

Paul Noble: [00:10:02] And it has captured the attention of not only the media and everyone because everyone feels the effects, but certainly the market and investors and folks that want to where they see opportunity and movement and the way that you can actually change industries by infusing capital, allowing companies like ours to do things quicker. I think that timing is a big part of things, and I think we are in a great position to be able to go out to the market. Have customers supporting us today and clamoring for more support in and across the business. And so we couldn’t be more excited but joint to have scale venture partners join our team and bring their expertize and scaling enterprise software companies and obviously providing capital. But more importantly, continuing to round out the great team. We have to allow us to build our vision faster and support our customers and create more value for our customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:18] So what is kind of the future hold? How are you seeing this influx of capital and the opportunity that’s presented itself? What is kind of the roadmap moving forward, at least in the short term?

Paul Noble: [00:11:30] Yeah, yeah. Big, big part of this, you know, was we’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing and continue to serve our customers where we started, which was on the indirect side of their business. So materials that they needed to run operations and things of that nature. What this and we’re going to continue to hire for that and not take our foot off the gas. What we’re really excited about is throughout the past 12 months, we’ve been asked by our current customers and prospects. And really, the market has been pulling us into simplifying how these organizations manage their raw and direct material that that supply has been kind of thrust into into chaos and uncertainty. And so. With this capital raise, we are going to look to resource and expand our reach into that space, which keeps us focused on materials, but allows us to serve each one of our customers that has that. Manages and purchases both to make their products and run their operations that we can provide the simplest way for them to do that, and so we’re going to utilize over the next year to build out that experience, fill some of the gaps that exist in their current systems and provide obviously, you know, a big part of our platform is deep learning and intelligence. And this combination of data filling data gaps and understanding data and augmenting human experts that know what they want to do, allowing them to do that simply, quickly and sustainably.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:18] Now, has anything changed regarding the type of clients you’re working with, is it are you getting deeper within existing clients? Are you? Are there opportunities developing with new potential partners?

Paul Noble: [00:13:30] Yeah, we are. Great question. We are obviously continuing to expand our value in and across organizations, so we know each of our customers have a global footprint. We typically are starting in North America, but now we are expanding more widely globally with many of them and continuing to deliver more, helping them really manage capital, manage risk, build trust, find that perfect balance, find their material truth. And we’re also that that really is the concept there is. They understand their supply chain. While there are many more than but kind of easy way to put it within their four walls or within their organization, where we’re advancing is that we are also going to build that network out. And so we are going to be investing resources and helping to build supply networks and be able to say, I make a change as a user of a material. Now I can share that with my best suppliers so they know and they can have what I need without me actually having to. Bring it in, house and sit on, sit on the inventory and you start building out these networks. And that’s really the future of supply chain and really harnessing all of the complexity and distilling it down into what really matters. So we’re going to continue to support our customers that way and give them just a broader, broader perspective and broader visibility and action and execution across their supply network.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:14] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website of the best way to reach out to you?

Paul Noble: [00:15:22] Yeah. So we comparison has all the information to get in touch with our team. Or you can reach out to hello at Amazon.com or sales at Amazon.com, and somebody will get back with you very quickly or on social on LinkedIn, as well as the company is. Feel free to reach out to me there, as well as at various and underscore A.I. on all. All the major social channels is a good way, good way to reach out and look, really look forward to connecting with all the listeners out there that are interested to learn more.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:59] And that’s VeriSign VR U.S.A.. Paul, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work for the city, for your firm. We really appreciate you.

Paul Noble: [00:16:12] Thanks, Leigh. Appreciate the opportunity. Good to talk to you again and look forward to speaking again to.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:18] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.