WHO: Dexibit
Founders: Angie Judge & Justin Kearney
HQ: Auckland
website: dexibit.com
What products, services, solutions or technology have you developed?
Dexibit provides data analytics software as a service specifically for visitor attractions. Dexibit helps venues predict and analyze visitor behavior – with forecasts, insights, dashboards and reports backed by a data automation platform.
WHAT KEY CUSTOMER PROBLEMS OR CUSTOMER “WANTS” DOES YOUR SOLUTION SOLVE?
Dexibit democratizes data for business and technical users alike by bringing disparate silo data sources under one roof – to make it faster and easier to make insight inspired decisions that get more visitors through the door, engaging and spending more, then coming back.
Who and where are your target customers?
Dexibit works exclusively with visitor attractions, both cultural and commercial, mostly larger enterprise or government customers and often with multiple locations. The majority of Dexibit’s revenue comes from within the United States.
How and when did you first come up with the idea for your business?
While visiting the Smithsonian, founder Angie Judge saw security guards counting visitors through the door with a manual clicker. With a background in network analytics after working in telecommunications for Hewlett Packard and Israeli software company Amdocs, Angie could foresee the data opportunity within the wider visitor attraction industry and Dexibit was born.
What are KEY things about your business that you are proud of?
Dexibit has an incredibly talented, diverse team with an empowered culture and leading product practices. As one of a new generation of data products and AI first software, Dexibit is breaking new ground on the ways of working in product teams beyond traditional SaaS.
How do you market your business and what advice do you have for others around marketing?
Dexibit is an industry authority for data in the visitor attractions vertical, which aids brand recognition and lead generation. Dexibit has a mostly enterprise sales motion, with a complementary product led growth freemium offer element. The company facilitates customers to speak on their data experiences at industry conferences and local meet ups, produces thought leadership in the form of playbooks and other downloadable resources, hosts a regular industry podcast with industry experts (‘The Data Diaries’) and most importantly, unlocks its global data assets for industry benchmarking and insights.
What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in building your business so far?
During the pandemic, every visitor attraction in the world closed for a lengthy period of time – many, more than once. Dexibit responded to what was an existential industry crisis by leading early and fast, bringing together industry leaders as the situation developed, pivoting to focus on Asia Pacific as it recovered and capturing the local experience in Auckland as it reopened ahead of other regions. It launched a free Simulator to aid visitor attractions in planning for an uncertain future and a benchmark ‘Recovery Index’ to track visitation performance, accompanied by industry commentary and analysis. The company also used the opportunity to modernize its brand and technology, building a next generation data analytics application and data automation platform. While it was not a challenge the team would wish for again, it has left the business better and stronger for having thrived with it.
What is the biggest entrepreneur lesson you would like to share with other Kiwis thinking of starting their own business?
Love the problem your business solves. You’ll be married to that problem, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till (hopefully) exit do you part. Loving your problem will be fuel for the hard yards, inspiration for your team and passion for your customers – day after day, year after year. And while it’s important to build a product people love, that problem has to be your first love, because an idea that’s not grounded in a problem won’t take you far. No other motivation – not fame, fortune or freedom, will give you the same resilience and be as boundless in the way you can fall in love with your problem, again and again.
Story created in partnership with Creative HQ.
Innovation Nation is a series celebrating stories of innovation and diversity in entrepreneurship from around New Zealand.
