nCino began inside a bank. Live Oak Bank, a small-business lender in Wilmington, North Carolina, built its own loan software on Salesforce to cut through its paperwork. The tool worked well enough that other banks wanted it. Most lenders still ran loans on paper, spreadsheets and old systems that did not talk to each other. nCino offered one cloud platform for the whole job, and in July 2020 it went public during the pandemic.

Spun Out of Live Oak

nCino spun out of Live Oak Bank as its own company in late 2011. Live Oak leaders Chip Mahan and Neil Underwood helped start it, and Pierre Naudé became its CEO. The bet was that every bank had the same slow, paper-heavy lending process. nCino built a Bank Operating System on Salesforce's cloud. A loan officer could take a customer from application to closing in one place, with every document and approval tracked.

Nearly Tripled on Day One

nCino priced its IPO at $31 a share on July 13, 2020, and began trading on Nasdaq the next day as NCNO. The stock rose about 195 percent on its first day. In 2022 nCino bought SimpleNexus, a maker of mortgage software. By 2026 more than 1,100 financial institutions used nCino. Sean Desmond replaced Naudé as CEO in 2025, and the company still trades on Nasdaq.

Cover: Oak Tree, Unknown artist. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an oak tree (Live Oak Bank, where nCino began).