Speed Dating for Businesses
Word-of-mouth is the bread and butter for growing businesses. But it can be tedious, taking time to establish a base of clients and networking to meet other professionals.
After beginning her own consulting business in 2021, Kavita Herbert quickly noticed a gap in the market: where do you go to connect with other businesses?
As such, BackBone was born.
‘We are a business matchmaking platform, think of us as word-of-mouth on steroids,’ explains Kavita, CEO of BackBone. ‘We are creating increased opportunity for our members through proximity to connect, learn from, and promote each other.’
Spending nearly two decades in the corporate sector working in big tech, Kavita has an impressive history. She was one of the first twenty-five employees for LinkedIn in Australia, and helped launch Dropbox and UberEats.
‘I got my first gig with LinkedIn, and those days no one knew what it was. People would ask us to spell “LinkedIn”,’ says Kavita, laughing. ‘I feel very fortunate I got a chance to be a part of that rocket ship.’
Now, with BackBone, she helps over 700 businesses meet their future customers, business partners, and get referrals. In the membership pool are businesses from over 60 industries. In the beginning, these were mainly professional services such as accounting, law, technology, consulting, and human resource businesses. Though, as BackBone has grown, the business types have expanded into hospitality, retail, manufacturing, health, and recruitment, among others.
‘We are industry agnostic,’ says Kavita. ‘We have recently started getting big players who want to work with small businesses, some banking teams and their business arms have joined BackBone.’
BackBone is on a membership structure. Clients pay to have access to online fortnightly forums where the BackBone team facilitate introductions. At the same time, BackBone plan to hold one conference a year in partnership with the CBD Sydney Chamber and Business NSW.
‘If you’re a business owner, you are busy, you need to network and expand your collaboration and partnership opportunities,’ says Kavita. ‘That’s where businesses find value at BackBone.’
For more information about BackBone, visit bizbackbone.com
