In a world where everyone has an opinion, Arcadia’s Shari Shipley and KG Hagedorn are betting on something far more valuable than noise.
Trust.
Not the kind purchased through boosted posts or buried inside anonymous five star reviews from people you don’t know. Real trust. The kind passed between women in a group text at 6:12 a.m. when someone needs a pediatrician, a plumber, a preschool, a speech therapist, or a new set of extensions by Friday.
That is the heartbeat behind Reffer, the app Shari Shipley and KG Hagedorn co-founded to turn word of mouth into something far more useful than a disappearing text thread. Their platform allows users to save, share, and discover recommendations from people they actually know, or at least know enough to trust.
"Some of the most important decisions in our lives are still made through conversation. Through a text. Through a friend saying, use this person, trust me. Reffer takes that exchange and gives it a home," says Shari.
It's a deceptively simple idea, which is often the case with the smartest ones. Because once they say it out loud, the response is almost always the same. Of course. Why doesn’t this already exist?
The answer, in part, has everything to do with the lives these women have lived.
For Shari, the lightbulb moment did not arrive in a boardroom. It arrived in chaos.
Long before she was building a tech platform, she was a Yellowbook sales rep knocking on doors and learning, up close, how much business is driven by reputation.
“That was really where I discovered the power of word of mouth,” she says. “When you are out there face to face, business to business, you see quickly that people buy from who they trust. They ask their neighbor. They ask the business next door. They ask the person who has already used the service. That stuck with me.”
Then life shifted. She married former Arizona Cardinals standout A.Q. Shipley and stepped into the reality of NFL life, which from the outside can look glossy, exciting, and enviable. And at times, it is. But there is another side to it, one that rarely makes the highlight reel.
In 2020, during the uncertainty of COVID, Shari found herself with a six week old baby, a two year old, and a husband who called after stepping out for coffee to say he had signed with Tampa Bay and needed to be there in 24 hours.
“It was a shock,” she says. “I had never done a real football move. We had a baby and toddler. We were in the middle of a pandemic. And suddenly I needed to become the logistics department for our entire family overnight.”
What followed was a mad dash through the invisible labor women are so often expected to carry without commentary. She needed doctors, schools, movers, a realtor, car transport, childcare, local services, beauty appointments, all of it. And as she looked around, she realized the information existed, but only in fragments, like among shared documents exclusive to NFL wives.
“There was so much amazing information being shared, but there was nowhere to save it in a way that made sense. Beyond a group text thread, I wanted the recommendation to be available when you actually need it, not just in the moment it was sent.”
What Shari experienced wasn’t isolated. It was simply one version of a much larger, shared reality. KG recognized it instantly, because her own path, though different on paper, carried the same invisible weight.
The wife of a veteran Navy SEAL who served more than eleven years, KG had seen what transition looks like when the infrastructure around a family disappears overnight. The support is there while service is active. Then suddenly, it’s not.
“When you get out of the SEALS, all the support goes away,” she says. “And I think people don’t always understand how jarring that is. It’s not just a career change. It’s an entire ecosystem disappearing. The medical support, the systems, the people who know how to navigate things for you. Suddenly you are doing all of it yourself, and often you are doing it while your family is also carrying the emotional weight of that transition.”
What rushes in to replace it is the reality of everyday life most people take for granted until they’re forced into it under pressure. Medical care. Specialists. Waiting lists. And like Shari, KG saw how much of that burden is quietly absorbed by the one holding the family together.
“It’s not just in sports or the military… it’s universal. The invisible burden is real. It’s everything we carry, manage, and solve behind the scenes, often without anyone seeing it.”
Reffer may have gained early traction through professional sports, but its core idea has always been much bigger than athlete families and relocation circles. It's about the modern exhaustion of managing life through too many channels with too little confidence in what is real. It is about motherhood. Community. Overwhelm. Credibility. And the longing for recommendations that still feel human in an era increasingly built on impersonality.
“I would never trust a stranger’s recommendation on my Botox,” KG says. “I would never trust them for an OBGYN. For the things that actually matter, for the people touching your face, your kids, your health, your home... you want somebody real behind the recommendation. You want context.”
That line lands because it gets at the deeper tension Reffer is tapping into. For all the promises of technology, people are craving discernment, not just access. They want someone to tell them where to go, but more importantly, they want to know who told them.
The app’s earliest strategic move was to begin where the pain point was most obvious. Professional sports.
“When you start to build an app, build an MVP,” Shari says. “You start with the most viable product. For us, that meant starting where we knew the need was urgent and obvious. We knew professional sports couples and families were constantly moving, constantly rebuilding, constantly looking for resources under pressure. We understood that world firsthand, so it made sense to start there.”
So they did. The sports world became Reffer’s first proving ground.
In just over a year and a half, Reffer has expanded into more than fifty professional sports teams, a milestone that says as much about the founders as it does about the product itself.
“To get into one team and to work with one team is so difficult. These are highly protected spaces. They don’t open their doors easily, and they shouldn’t. So the fact that Reffer has been welcomed in the way it has tells you something. It tells you the need is real,” says KG.
Now many of those teams are using Reffer as part of onboarding and orientation, offering it to incoming families as a practical tool from day one. The platform’s private group function allows them to create protected internal communities where recommendations stay credible and resources do not get lost. And outside of those private ecosystems, public facing lists from trusted names add another layer of interest and influence.
“The biggest question from A.Q.’s fans is always where do you go to eat, where do you buy your meat,” Shari says. “People want the real places. They want to know what someone they trust actually uses, not what they were paid to post about.”
It turns out curiosity is part of the business model. So is authenticity.
“At Reffer, is everyone’s an influencer,” KG says. “Why shouldn’t the person making a great recommendation get some credit for it? Why shouldn’t the business be able to thank them? Influence has become this big polished thing online, but in real life, influence is still your friend telling you where to go.”
Still, no story like this is built on a good concept alone. It is built on stamina. And in that regard, both women speak with refreshing honesty about what it has taken to get here.
If Shari is the high octane connector, the sales strategist, the relationship builder who can open doors and create momentum, then KG is the systems architect, the analytical operator, the one shaping product, operations, fundraising, and roadmap. Together, they have the kind of yin and yang every startup claims to want and few actually find.
”I’ve always wanted to be a creator. I love building the thing behind the thing. The systems. The roadmap. The problem solving. That’s where I light up," says KG.
They are also both mothers, which means the work has never existed in a vacuum. It has unfolded in the middle of pickups, practices, guilt, ambition, fatigue, and the impossible mythology of work life balance.
“If I had even known a fraction of what I was getting myself into with app development, would I have done it?” Shari says. “The answer is yes. But it has absolutely been a shock to my soul, my life, my work life balance. It’s been consuming in the best and hardest ways.”
KG’s definition of balance is far less romantic than the term itself.
“I don’t think multitasking is real, at least not in the way women are told it should be. I’ve had to redefine it in a way that feels honest.”
There is wisdom in that.
That may be the hidden story inside Reffer. Not just a company solving a need, but two women refusing to choose between caregiving and ambition, between motherhood and creation, between community building and personal drive.
And their lives outside the app reinforce that same instinct. Shari founded WINI, the Women in Need Initiative, which has built a volunteer network serving women and children across Phoenix. KG is a founding member of PCH Sage, a giving group focused on pediatric mental health through Phoenix Children’s.
And when it comes to their entrepreneurial advice?
“Just do it,” Shari says. “Trust yourself enough to start.”
Download the free app: ref-fer.com
“I had never done a real NFL football move. We had a baby and toddler. We were in the middle of a pandemic. And suddenly I needed to become the logistics department for our entire family overnight.” -Shari
“At Reffer, everyone’s an influencer. Why shouldn’t the person making a great recommendation get some credit for it?”