About Referral Factory
We built Referral Factory to make referrals operational, not accidental.
Referral Factory helps businesses turn customer goodwill into a real acquisition channel with promotion, tracking, qualification, rewards, and automation in one place.
Why we exist
Referrals were already powerful. Running them was the hard part.
Referral Factory was founded in 2020 by Kirsty Sharman after years spent helping companies grow through customer and influencer-led acquisition.
Again and again, the same pattern showed up: businesses already had happy customers, but they had no clean way to turn that goodwill into a repeatable referral channel.
The problem was never belief in referrals. The problem was execution. Teams were still tracking referrals in spreadsheets, manually checking conversions, and issuing rewards one by one.
Referral Factory was built to remove that operational drag. The goal was simple from day one: give businesses a faster way to launch, promote, track, reward, and scale referral programs without needing developers or stitched-together tools.
What the platform is meant to solve
How we think
The principles behind the product.
Customer success is part of the product
We treat support, onboarding, and product clarity as part of the platform experience, not an afterthought.
Outcomes matter more than activity
We care about whether teams can actually launch and grow a working referral channel, not just whether they can configure one.
The product should remove manual work
Referral software should reduce admin, not create more of it. That is why automation and clarity sit at the center of the platform.
The roadmap follows real operators
We build around what marketing, growth, and customer teams actually need when they run referral programs in the real world.
Who we serve
Built for operators who want referrals to become a real channel.
Startups and small businesses
Teams that need a real referral engine without paying the setup cost of custom-built infrastructure too early.
Growing operators
Businesses that already have customers and want referrals to become a repeatable acquisition channel, not a one-off campaign.
Complex and enterprise teams
Organizations that need more control, stronger branding, security confidence, and a platform that fits broader operational workflows.
Industries
Used across referral-heavy, trust-driven categories.
Team
A small team building a better operational layer for referrals.
Kirsty Sharman
CEO
Alik Arakelov
CTO
Jessica Paluzzi
CMO
Marcele Azevedo
Marketing
Arman Mkhitaryan
Engineering
Stacey Vorster
Support
Andy Sharman
Support
Murray Legg
Advisor
Claudia
AI Agent
Want to see how Referral Factory actually works?
The fastest way to understand the product is still a live walkthrough with the team.