Australian startup solving the growth problem businesses can't afford to ignore
Announcement posted by ReferUs Network 20 Apr 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Australian Platform Quietly Solving The Business Problem Nobody Talks About
While businesses cut marketing budgets and chase new customers, a Gold Coast startup has built the system that turns existing customers into a self-compounding sales force. And the world is starting to notice.
GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA — In the toughest economic climate Australian small businesses have faced in years, most are doing the same thing. Spending more on marketing to reach strangers while completely ignoring the most powerful growth tool sitting right in front of them.
Their existing customers.
Word of mouth has always been the most credible and most effective form of marketing on earth. Nielsen research consistently confirms that 92 percent of people trust a recommendation from someone they know above any form of advertising. Yet in most businesses word of mouth is entirely unstructured. It happens by accident. Or it doesn't happen at all.
ReferUs, built on the Gold Coast and co-founded by Australian entrepreneur Justin Herald, has spent the past eight months quietly changing that.
In just eight months the platform has attracted more than 1300 businesses across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Israel, South Africa and parts of Europe. Large strategic partners are now in conversations with the company about formal integration arrangements, drawn by a platform that does something no referral tool has managed before.
It makes word of mouth deliberate, trackable and scalable.
The timing could not be more relevant. As cost-of-living pressures squeeze consumer spending and small businesses face mounting pressure on margins, the businesses finding growth are not necessarily the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They are the ones whose customers are actively and consistently referring them to others.
"We built ReferUs because we watched businesses spend fortunes trying to find new customers while ignoring the people already in their lives who genuinely wanted to help them grow," said co-founder Justin Herald. "Your customers trust you. Your fans believe in you. They are having conversations every single day with people who need what you offer. We built the system that finally lets them act on that."
The platform allows a referrer to send a tracked lead to a business in ten seconds from their phone in the middle of a real conversation. Not later when they remember. Right then at the exact moment of highest intent.
But the feature generating the most interest from larger organisations is what ReferUs calls Refer a Referrer. A single referrer can invite people they know with completely different networks, markets and social circles to also refer that business. The referral network compounds itself without the business doing anything. One referrer becomes five. Five becomes twenty.
There is also a social media feature with no equivalent anywhere in the world. A referrer places one button on a social media post and every person who clicks it, including complete strangers looking for exactly what that business offers, gets automatically captured as a tracked lead in real time.
For Australian businesses navigating one of the most challenging economic environments in recent memory, the proposition is straightforward. Stop leaving your best growth tool to chance.
"Word of mouth was never the old way of doing business," said Herald. "It was always the best way. We just forgot to make it deliberate."
ReferUs is available to Australian businesses for just $375 AUD per year as the company is committed to making sure small businesses can magnify their word-of-mouth referrals..
About ReferUs
ReferUs is an Australian built referral platform operating across six countries that helps businesses of all sizes turn their existing customers, friends and fans into a structured, trackable and self-compounding referral network.
Media Enquiries
Justin Herald justin@justinherald.com
+61 414 666 622