NCINO

nCino did not start in a garage. It started inside Live Oak Bank, a Wilmington, North Carolina bank that was already doing something unusual — lending to small businesses in niche sectors like veterinary practices and pharmacies using a technology-first model.

The bank's team, led by Pierre Naudé, built internal software to manage their loan origination process more efficiently. That internal tool was so good that other banks started asking if they could use it too.

In 2012, Live Oak spun the software out as a separate company: nCino. The name means "I know" in Zulu — Naudé is South African.

They built the bank operating system on top of Salesforce's platform, which gave them enterprise-grade infrastructure from day one.

nCino sells annual software subscriptions to banks and credit unions. The core product is a bank operating system — a single platform for loan origination, account opening, deposit products, and regulatory compliance.

Banks pay based on the number of users and the scale of their operations. The appeal is replacing a patchwork of legacy systems — old loan origination software, Excel spreadsheets, paper files — with a single cloud platform.

Switching costs are high because changing core banking software is enormously disruptive. Churn is consequently very low.

The nCino Bank Operating System is the flagship — a single platform covering loan origination for commercial, small business, mortgage, and consumer loans. nCino Portfolio Analytics provides real-time data and reporting on loan performance.

The Customer Engagement Suite handles account opening and digital banking workflows. nCino IQ is an AI layer that automates document processing, credit analysis, and compliance checks.

Together, they are designed to replace the disparate systems most banks still operate.

nCino's distribution advantage was Live Oak Bank itself — the company's biggest early reference customer and most credible validator. Banks do not buy software from startups.

They buy from companies that other banks already use and trust. Having a functioning bank as a reference customer opened doors that a pure startup could not have reached.

nCino also moved up-market deliberately — starting with community banks and credit unions, then expanding to regional banks, and eventually targeting large global financial institutions. By the time JPMorgan or Santander was evaluating nCino, there were dozens of reference customers at every tier below them.

The core banking software market is dominated by entrenched incumbents — Fiserv, FIS, Jack Henry — that have relationships going back decades. These vendors maintain legacy systems that banks depend on but also hate, which creates opportunity.

But displacing them is slow. nCino often gets implemented alongside legacy systems rather than replacing them outright, which limits the revenue per customer.

Profitability has also been a challenge — nCino was not profitable at the time of its IPO and has focused on growth investment. As interest rates rose in 2022-2023, bank lending volumes fell, which directly reduced the activity driving nCino's revenue growth.

nCino raised venture funding from Insight Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, among others, totaling around $214 million before going public. The Salesforce Ventures backing was strategic — nCino was built on Salesforce's Force.com platform, so Salesforce had an interest in seeing nCino succeed and grow.

Live Oak Bancshares retained a significant ownership stake after the spinout. The IPO in July 2020 priced at $31 per share and raised $250 million, valuing the company at approximately $2.9 billion.