Scot Wingo. He’s the CEO of Spiffy. He’s also a 4-time serial entrepreneur and industry thought leader in ecommerce and on-demand economy realm. He’s appeared on CNBC’s Today’s Show and contributed his expertise to The Wall Street Journal, New York Times along with many other publications. He previously founded Stingray Software which he sold to Rogue Wave Software, AuctionRover which was sold to GoTo/Overture, and ChannelAdvisor that went public in 2013, under the stock symbol ECOM.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4-6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To trust your instincts and invest even more in your own companies”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – Nathan introduces Scot to the show
01:29 – Spiffy is an on-demand car wash and detail company
01:33 – Customers pay for car washes and Spiffy is full-stock
01:59 – Spiffy is a pay-as-you-go model
02:02 – Some customers would request to have their car cleaned on a regular basis so they’re currently working on a subscription plan
02:30 – Having your car cleaned is addicting
03:02 – Spiffy started in 2014
03:17 – Scot was 46 in 2014
03:26 – Scot loves building a company
04:00 – In 1999, AuctionRover started
04:14 – AuctionRover is a search engine for auction sites
- 04:16 – Scot always had a plan to develop software for sellers
- 04:20 – After getting acquired, they developed the software which turned into ChannelAdvisor
05:43 – They’ve raised $3M for AuctionRover
05:53 – AuctionRover started to get acquisition offers
06:16 – Scot was a fan of Goto
06:45 – Stingray put Scot in a position where it had to work
- 07:32 – Scot had accumulated personal debt to run Stingray
- 07:55 – Scot was 25 when he founded Stingray
- 08:03 – Scot had Stingray for 3 years before selling it to Rogue
- 08:11 – Acquisition price was around $7M
- 08:27 – It was software and Scot had a 30% margin
09:07 – Scot added $3M through fundraising
- 09:55 – Tim Draper was on Episode 129
- 10:17 – AuctionRover’s acquisition price was $20-50M
10:43 – The negotiation with Goto to buy back AuctionRover
11:18 – Scot bought back AuctionRover for around $1M
- 11:37 – They bought it back in 2001
12:00 – When Scot IPOd ChannelAdvisor, everything was new to him and he had never taken a company that big before
12:07 – Scot’s dad was a business person and was on Fortune Magazine
12:58 – Scot always has a higher goal
13:37 – “If you’ve raised a venture capital, you’re going to have an exit”
13:47 – Scot wanted to see what an IPO process looked like
14:02 – Scot raised capital for ChannelAdvisor
14:14 – ChannelAdvisor helps retailers and brands sell on eBay, Amazon and other channels
14:26 – ChannelAdvisor raised a total of $90M before the IPO
15:08 – ChannelAdvisor’s market price on Day 1
16:03 – Scot brought in a COO to help him
- 16:11 – After going public, the COO was promoted to president
- 16:20 – Scot felt he wasn’t learning much more and the president wanted to step into the CEO role
- 16:27 – Scot felt it was a great time for the president to mature and take on the CEO position
- 16:47 – Scot just simply sent a letter to the board about him leaving
17:35 – Scot is more of a tactical entrepreneur
17:47 – “I just really like solving hard problems and scaling businesses”
17:55 – Everytime Scot would have a career change, it was in a different space
18:05 – Since Spiffy is consumer oriented, Scot believes he can scale it faster than ChannelAdvisor
18:27 – Scot’s goal for Spiffy
19:35 – Scot had 2 physical car washes after selling his 2^nd company
19:44 – Spiffy was an MVP in 2014 when it was launched
20:09 – There are reasons why customers don’t like detailing
20:40 – 70% of Spiffy’s revenue is from out-work consumers
21:11 – Spiffy just crossed the $200M runaway and is growing annually north of 100%
21:33 – Team size in the office is around 20 and around 60 technicians
22:06 – Spiffy has raised $7.5M on their series A
22:18 – Scot still gets excited raising funds
22:38 – Scot’s aspiration for Spiffy is bigger than his checkbook
23:55 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Always aim higher when it comes to your goals.
Going through multiple exits boosts your learning and experience.
Always trust your instincts.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

697: How $1m in Personal Guaruntees Led to $500M IPO 15 Years Later

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders