Kristin Myers: So you buy something online, you give them a name, an email, and your payment method. Well, my guest company takes that email and tells the brand how old you are, where you went to school, what you do for a living, what your house is worth, and whether you have kids. None of which you told them.
And they raised $22 million just last week to do more of it.
Their slogan is "Everybody is Somebody."
Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman are at the desk. But first, let's take a look at their company.
The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
Every click, every purchase, every abandoned cart, brands are collecting more information about their customers than ever before.
But here's the problem: Having the data doesn't mean you actually understand the customer.
That's the opportunity Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman are going after with OuterSignal.
Their startup is building a customer intelligence and agentic personalization platform designed to help consumer brands turn scattered customer signals into action, figuring out who customers are, what they want, and how a brand should engage with them next.
And these aren't first-time founders.
Zach has built and exited businesses across healthcare and e-commerce, while Noah has experience building companies, investing in consumer startups, and connecting founders around the world.
And now they're betting AI can fundamentally change the relationship between brands and consumers.
But here's the billion-dollar question: Can OuterSignal turn mountains of customer data into personalization that actually drives sales and become the intelligence layer behind the next generation of consumer businesses?
From Startup to Stock Exchange, Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman are next.
And here with us now at the desk are Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman of OuterSignal.
Zach, Noah, thank you both so much for joining us. And I saw you guys have merch on, which is always great, which I love.
Okay, so let's start with the origin.
You guys built consumer companies. Zach, PupSocks, Thread Studio, a chain of clinics. What was the problem that you kept hitting?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, I think the problem kind of shows up in two ways.
For each of us as consumers, we see really targeted and personalized content and ads on social media. But then we open websites, we have an email inbox, I mean, even mail that comes to us, and none of it applies, right?
And so on my end, I've always felt that there was such a huge opportunity to unlock the level of personalization, to make things thoughtful that we see in some pockets of the internet, but really not throughout the rest of our everyday lives.
And in running the consumer brands that I was, I said, I don't want to go out and start trying to buy information from, you know, these data brokers that are transmitting credit records and all of these different things.
There's a lot just from the public domain that can be learned about who an audience is that can be utilized to be able to avoid sending a ridiculous message to a college student that's meant for a grandmother, and for all of the other cases in between.
So we started building OuterSignal to solve just that.
Kristin Myers: I remember getting something from AARP, and I remember thinking, I know I've turned 38, but this shouldn't be for me just yet.
Okay, so where does the data come from that you guys are sharing with some of these brands?
It says "public context" in some of your materials, but what does that actually mean in practice?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, it's built like a search engine.
So in much the same way that Google indexes the available internet, we don't do any kind of shadowy work.
The same kind of things that an overcaffeinated intern might be able to find are utilized on our end.
And we actually take great pride in the fact that we don't have anything to disclose that someone isn't already publicly sharing or otherwise proud of.
Like, you know, your role on your LinkedIn is no secret to anybody, but it says something, and that should be available.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so you're saying that you're taking that, essentially scrubbing the internet, finding all that public information.
What do you actually do with it?
An order comes in. OuterSignal has this information. How are you packaging that and sending it all to the company?
Zach Zelner: The example that I'd like to give is if one consumer checked out from a business, and that business's only job in the entire world was to send that person the best possible email, give them the best possible landing page experience, give them the best experience, ostensibly, they would want to take the time to say, who the heck is this person that we're writing the email for, right?
If my mother comes and checks out from a business, the way that business should interface with her is materially different than the way they should interface with me.
And so what does that mean in practical terms?
The email that they send me, post-purchase follow-up, should have to do with me liking to work out and me being an entrepreneur and all the things that make me me.
The ads that I get, the experience that I get when they send me mailers, the landing page experience, all of that abstracts into this core concept of all of these companies having infinite touchpoints with their consumers, and they are all essentially right now based on guesswork.
Finger to the wind. Who is my customer?
Let's throw everything at the wall, dump them all into the same email flows, give them all the same ads, and look at the numbers at the end of the month and say, where are we up?
And they pick the single one that kind of works better, just averaged across the entire audience.
And so what we're saying is everybody is somebody.
Whether you're a notable celebrity or not, it doesn't matter.
That kind of bespoke treatment can now be scaled all the way up to each and every purchaser.
And we have a lot of reverence for the way that Chewy built their business with really thoughtful touchpoints for each and every customer.
And they, you know, 10-plus years ago, had huge armies of reps who were designated almost with a book of business to really know the individual purchasers in their cohorts.
And this phenomenon of not knowing who you're interacting with is only a couple decades old.
Before commerce went digital, you would go into a store and you would know who's on the other side, and they would know you.
There was a personal relationship involved.
Kristin Myers: There had to be shopping, right?
So this is interesting because I think you guys are actually one of our newer set of founders that we've had on the show so far.
Launched in January, $22 million raised just last week. You're working with thousands of brands now. HexClad, Jones Road, AG1.
Talk to us a little bit about why you think you were able to, I don't know if I want to call it scaling, but at least work with so many clients and customers so incredibly quickly in nine months.
We've just hit October.
Noah Friedman: I think it starts with building something incredible and revolutionary that they've never seen.
I mean, you have to remember, for anybody who's watching this that sells to consumers, the following will sound all too familiar.
Orders come through every single day. All those people get emails. We have no idea who those people are.
And that's just the way business is done these days.
And so for the first time ever, when you can give someone either a video or a demo and show them in real time, I'm taking the veil off these people that have chosen to spend their hard-earned money with you.
That is a truly revolutionary, delightful experience that we've introduced to market.
Credit to Zach and the team with the incredible work that's been done.
It's never existed before, right?
And so you take that, and then you couple it with relentless hard work, a really strong go-to-market motion that we continue to refine, which is all intended to build deep relationships, do right by our customers, raise awareness in the right way, and importantly, build a product that people love to talk about.
You make some progress pretty quick.
Zach Zelner: Yeah, word spreads, and it's borne out in the numbers.
When brands are able to start seeing retention go up and affinity and NPS scores increasing, they tell their friends, and we're very grateful for that.
Kristin Myers: So I know that the tagline is "Everybody is Somebody," but some somebodies are known to everyone more than others.
And that's the VIP detection that you guys have as a headline feature.
So Kim Kardashian was actually in one brand's order data, and they went and sent her a box.
Talk us through how something like that would really work.
Zach Zelner: Yeah. Well, look, one thing that we also hold very near and dear is that we don't want to identify anybody who's trying to obscure who they are.
Or, you know, if we happen to find something in the public domain that says, oh, this could be a celebrity, we're not trying to subvert the efforts that they're making there.
But we can also flag Kim when Kim places an order.
And in that specific case, a brand, just like any business owner would, right?
We forget all of these brands that we're working with are run by teams that are trying to build partnerships, relationships, and take care of their customers.
And frankly, if Kim Kardashian walks into your storefront, you should make a little extra effort to lean in and make sure she has a fantastic experience, right?
And that won't always pay dividends, but sometimes it does.
And when Magic Mind said, wow, we're so proud that she likes our product, they made sure to send her a whole bunch of free product.
And the first thing she did was post them and tag them, thanking them for it.
It wasn't a sponsored deal. It was just, frankly, an organically happy customer who got a little extra help.
Noah Friedman: I'll give you one.
Kristin Myers: I was going to say, I was curious to know who it was and what she ordered.
Noah Friedman: But I'll give you one of my favorite examples.
I was on a call probably a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, with one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
They have a large flagship property that everybody listening has heard of.
And I was speaking to their CMO, and he told me the story that LeBron James' assistant booked a room for LeBron James, a very publicly known assistant to LeBron James.
And his team had no idea that LeBron James was staying in the hotel until he walked through the two front doors.
And as expected, he was looking to perhaps skip the line and have a little bit of a different experience than your standard consumer.
Not in a flagrantly narcissistic way in any capacity, but it's LeBron James.
And so you should maybe give him a little bit of something extra special.
And so there was this tremendous friction that happened on check-in, where they had to scramble at the last minute to try to create something.
And they were on their back feet, all because they didn't know, because they didn't take the time to say, who is this person checking in?
Because of course they didn't take the time to say, who is this person checking in? Because how could you, right?
And so had they had OuterSignal, for any consumer business or hotel or app, if LeBron or insert any person here checks in or books, you should know about it, right?
Kristin Myers: So talk to me about customers that aren't necessarily VIPs, but they also might, because you have a very specific example about how someone actually worked at a brand that a particular retailer wanted to work with, or essentially be in the shop of.
So that was one of your case studies.
A Walmart buyer ordered with her personal email, and then the brand was able to get a meeting off of that.
I believe I'm giving that example correctly.
So talk us through that a little bit because she didn't exactly invite the solicitation.
So talk us through how that happened, and also then comment on should that even be a sales lead?
Zach Zelner: Well, the way that at least I, and I think a lot of people, move through the world is that we've got opinions on the products we like, the businesses that we want to support.
And when I'm asked to support, especially if it's one that I'm a patron of, I don't have any problem. I would welcome their participation in whatever ecosystem I'm playing in.
In this specific case, she responded so warmly and said, "I had no idea you guys were looking to sell to us, but of course, happy to set up all the meetings."
And she ended up being a champion for them.
It's those kinds of opportunities that I think are kind of sitting unavailable to especially smaller businesses, right?
I don't know, but Victoria's Secret is not having any trouble having a conversation with Walmart, right?
Kristin Myers: Right.
Zach Zelner: Those doors are open.
But for smaller brands that are earning a reputation and have no idea who's in their Rolodex, right, it is kind of about who you know.
And if you're fortunate enough to have people who could be influential, you should at least have the opportunity to know this is at least what this person publicly shares.
And I think that's the key.
Everyone has their private lives. We don't have visibility into it, nor do we want to.
And when we think about somebody's public persona, that is a very different element to the dynamic, right?
And so we would never want anyone to feel called out for anything that they don't otherwise kind of proudly share with the world.
Kristin Myers: So here's what happens to an order when you make a purchase at checkout.
You hand over a name and email, a shipping address, and usually a credit card number, or at least some form of payment.
Now, what a brand using OuterSignal sees, according to the company's own materials, is your age, your gender, your occupation, your employer, where you went to college, the estimated value of your property, your interests, your hobbies, whether you're married, whether you have children, and your social media following.
Now, the company says it matches 94% of customers and it costs the brand three cents per person.
So we're going to discuss that a little bit more.
We're back now with Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman of OuterSignal.
Guys, so talk to me a little bit more because as I was just reading all of that information, it can sound a little scary, right, that a brand knows that I'm not married, that I don't have children, that I have a dog.
I saw this recently. Amazon has my shopping preferences. I apparently love skincare. I like buying for my dog.
But I want to talk a little bit more about the privacy because some people might be really uncomfortable with all of that information.
Now, obviously, you're positioning this as personalization as a service.
But what do you say to those folks that say this is actually surveillance as a service to a brand?
Zach Zelner: Well, I think one important level setting that should be had here is that all of that information is constantly being traded by huge armies of data brokers.
And much of it, by the way, is not stuff that's otherwise publicly available, right?
Whether we like it or not, the Equifax, Experian, TransUnion of the world are actually selling your credit profile.
You can even go buy it on AWS.
Quite literally, you can just go make an account and go and buy a subscription to it.
And it's not that it's not available. It's that these huge enterprises, big, big, big businesses, do utilize those kinds of things.
And I actually believe that that is going way too far, consented or not.
Whether we opt in in the scope of us getting a credit score, it still doesn't feel great.
And what we're saying is that there's a way to deliver much better and more delightful experiences and limit it solely to the things that are already in the public eye.
Right? And that's the key difference.
Meta is doing a whole lot of things with all of the data that you're providing them, and it's kind of a natural part of life for most of us.
But your digital footprint and the things that you share, the blog post that you might write, are still all things that speak to who you are, and you shared them for a reason.
And so it's our belief that for each and every consumer, your sharing into the public domain is an opportunity to actually serve you much better rather than take it as some kind of taboo and yet have this massive, huge, you know, billion-dollar industry of that same or much deeper data being traded around, unbeknownst to you.
Kristin Myers: So can a consumer in some way opt out?
Because the consumer might say, look, when I bought that pair of shoes, I consented for you to know my name and my address.
I consented for you to withdraw money from my bank account, and obviously to have my address to know where you need to ship me the goods, right, if I'm getting it sent to me.
But I didn't necessarily consent for all of that other personal information.
So is that something that is possible, or is this, as you're saying, people just already have this data, you're just connecting the dots for a brand better?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, we're not even connecting the dots to this big data trade, right?
What I'm actually saying is that this is just a snapshot of a person's public persona, right?
We also don't build a data store and hold on to that ourselves.
So we really operate as a research service for our brands to then build personalization around.
And the only one who's got that is the brand that you've patronized and spent your money with, right?
And I think that's where, in an analog world where we were existing for thousands of years, this is just how it would go, right?
If somebody walked into your store with a ski mask, I mean, I think you would probably recall.
Kristin Myers: Yeah, yeah.
Zach Zelner: That's right, right?
And instead, we're like, don't you dare see me.
And I'm like, well, we live in a society.
And if there are things that folks feel strongly shouldn't be shared or available in the public, I agree with it.
And there's a lot of tooling out there to take things off if you wouldn't want a role shared.
But if I'm a storekeeper and Jane walks in and I know she works down there at the hospital, I would like to be able to say hello and also know she's a nurse and tell her that these shoes will help her at her shift.
And I think that's a better experience than her walking in with a ski mask and saying, treat me like everybody.
Kristin Myers: So a moment ago, you mentioned that there's a lot of data that is being shared that you don't necessarily share, right?
That you guys are only grabbing information that is in, again, the public context or things that we willingly share about ourselves.
So to that point, say more about that.
Is there anything that you've decided not to show brands, even maybe information that you do have access to or that you could see?
Where is the line for OuterSignal in terms of what it will package and share with the brand and what it won't?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, it's a great point.
Certain things that are easy and top of mind are just voter registrations.
It's all public domain. Why it is, is its own thing. I think that's a bit crazy, but it is.
It's all freely available, and it's the kind of thing that we just don't want to play in, right?
I don't think. Let me rephrase.
I think it's critical that whether it's legal or not, whether it's in the public domain or not, we're thoughtful stewards of a powerful tool and that we don't create profiling of people.
And profiling doctors versus lawyers is a very different thing than political parties, as an example.
Kristin Myers: Right, or race, you know.
So you mentioned political parties. So race, religion, sexuality, is that information that is also shared?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, we don't touch any of it.
I think it's important to frame that this is all in service of creating delightful experiences for consumers.
Like, we look at our end customer, the actual customer that we're serving, as the consumer, right?
When I wake up and I get an email from a brand that I've spent thousands of dollars with, and they're telling me that they just dropped something and its language and its product and its creative has no bearing on me, it's an instant delete of the email for a company that's worth billions and billions of dollars.
That's crazy, right?
If I show up to a sales meeting, if I show up to a cocktail party, if I show up to an interview, if I show up to meet someone new, the best version of that conversation is one where I've done some homework on who I'm meeting with.
Right? What do you care about? Where did you go to school?
If you're public on Instagram, oh, you just went on a trip. Tell me about the trip.
This is how you interface with people and get to know them, only with things that they've chosen to share publicly.
And so this context has been available in B2B for a long time.
Anybody watching who's in the B2B space knows that you're doing some basic enrichment.
Say, hey, who's my buyer? How much decision-making power do they have? Et cetera, et cetera.
So that when you're on the phone with them or emailing them or selling them, you've got some context.
And in the consumer economy, which powers so much of America, the world, it's completely backwards, right?
There is no level of personalization other than, hey, Noah, you bought this, you might like that, if you're good, right?
And our whole argument is that if Noah and Noah's mother, Mom, if you're watching, I love you. Hello.
Buy the same wine, which we do, we probably are going to resonate with a very different message and reason why.
And so emailing me about that wine or hitting me with the ad about that wine, about how it's cleaner and healthier and lower sugar, and it's not going to give me a hangover in the morning, and I get back to work and have a glass and cool off.
Whereas for my mother, it's when the kids come over, have a nice relaxing evening.
That is going to print for the business, and it's going to be a much better experience for me than showing a creative of an older woman.
There's an argument for why it actually drives inclusion, right?
I think we all want to see ourselves in the world around us, right?
And we can wax on about echo chambers and the sort, but at the end of the day, if you are coming in and treating everybody the exact same and saying none of you have unique interests, none of you have unique needs, all of you are just the same person.
Here's the thing: How does that help smaller audiences or the individual feel seen in that?
It doesn't, especially when they're proudly sharing who they are.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so we have like a minute left before break.
I want to ask you two very quick questions.
The first one is going to be scaling.
Right now you're working with brands in New York and Australia.
Why not, or U.S. and Australia? What did I say?
Noah Friedman: Oh, yeah, you're in Australia?
Kristin Myers: Yeah, obviously, including New York. New York is a country to us.
Why not Europe? Is that something that you're thinking about scaling to next, or is it because there's a lot that they do not allow in terms of public domain information?
Zach Zelner: Yeah, there's a lot of complexity there.
It's also, you know, there's a huge number of platforms that are used in Europe that aren't as ubiquitous here in the U.S.
We saw a market in Australia where a lot of our existing customers were selling into, and so we added it.
But we're going to continue exploring.
And the U.S. alone right now has plenty for us to do.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so the question I ask everyone.
You guys are sitting on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Big bell right behind us.
Do you think about going public?
You've scaled massively in less than a year.
So when might that journey to public markets begin?
Zach Zelner: I think we've got a lot of work to do.
And when and if the time comes, we'll be proud to do it.
We think about building an awesome business, and where that leads us, we shall see.
Kristin Myers: I absolutely love that.
We're going to have to bring you back because you guys are moving so fast.
So I'm so excited to hear about your journey.
Thank you, Zach Zelner, Noah Friedman of OuterSignal.
