{"id":602,"date":"2018-07-19T10:12:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/win\/?p=602"},"modified":"2024-01-08T16:39:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T21:39:59","slug":"explorer-wingo-talks-challenges-choices-in-growing-spiffy-with-9m-in-new-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/win\/explorer-wingo-talks-challenges-choices-in-growing-spiffy-with-9m-in-new-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Explorer\u2019 Wingo Talks Challenges, Choices in Growing Spiffy with $9M in New Funding<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Just as explorers once raced to find cities of gold, entrepreneurs like Scot Wingo are battling each other to win the race to market dominance for on-demand vehicle maintenance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most exciting things about building something nobody has every built before is you feel a bit like an explorer \u2013 every day we have a near infinite set of paths we can take, which ones are the right ones?\u201d says Wingo, CEO and an original investor in startup\u00a0Get Spiffy.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cShould we open our sixth market or continue to grow existing markets?<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers are asking us for X, Y an Z services, should we look at those?<\/p>\n

\n

Get Spiffy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cHow fast is too fast, how slow is too slow?\u201d<\/p>\n

Securing $9 million in\u00a0new venture capital that was announced earlier this week<\/a>\u00a0doesn\u2019t mean Wingo can rest on laurels. In fact, he\u2019s going to be even more busy as he and his team of entrepreneurs search for new frontiers to grow Spiffy. With California-based Yoshi and others continuing to enter the on-demand car maintenance space, Spiffy also faces more competition.<\/p>\n

The Skinny caught up with Wingo to talk about the new funds and how Spiffy plans to deploy the capital.<\/p>\n

\n

Can you explain why you decided to raise more capital?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re always balancing growth vs. profitability and as we looked at the results from our first round and talked to the board, we came to the conclusion that as we experimented across four-dimensions (new geographies, new services, new products, new \u2018channels\u2019) we were fortunate to have a lot of successes in there that made us feel like it was good timing to continue to grow.<\/p>\n

Was the round oversubscribed? How much had you wanted?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I mentor first-time entrepreneurs that are looking at taking venture capital, I spend a lot time discussing the \u2018how much capital should you raise.\u2019<\/p>\n

If you raise too much, then you risk too much dilution and not being able to \u2018grow into\u2019 the valuation.\u00a0 If you raise too little, then you are always raising capital.<\/p>\n

We targeted $7-9 and were pleased to come in at the high range of that.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately we did have to trim some folks back, but hopefully they will love our progress and if we do another round will want to participate in that down the line.<\/p>\n

Why are investors apparently so willing to invest in the firm?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019d need to ask them.<\/p>\n

[We did. Says Jason Caplain of Bull City Venture Partners who is a long-time investor in all-things Scot Wingo from ChannelAdvisor to Spiffy: \u201cWe continue to be impressed with the team led by Scot and Karl. The company is one of our fastest growing portfolio companies and we made the investment to help the company meet customer demand.\u201d]<\/p>\n

Back to Wingo on pitching investors:<\/p>\n

[W]hen we pitch the business, what we get the most engagement on is:<\/p>\n

o\u00a0Addressable market\u00a0\u2013 this market is huge.\u00a0 I like to say this is a \u2018Starbucks-level\u2019 opportunity and I mean it.\u00a0 There\u2019s no national\/global car wash\/car care brand and we believe our customer experience is 5-10X better than anything out there, so this has the potential to be a very big company. Starbucks has $20b+ in annual revenues and a $80b market cap.\u00a0 That\u2019s the size of the opportunity we are chasing here.<\/p>\n

o\u00a0Execution\u00a0\u2013 there\u2019s a classic cliche that I have found to be true \u2013 ideas are easy, execution is hard.\u00a0 We are in 5 markets, three channels (office park, fleet, residential), many service+products (wash, detail, oil, Spiffy Blue) and growing > 100% y\/y while maintaining a very high customer service rating.<\/p>\n

o\u00a0Technology\u00a0\u2013 It\u2019s easy to call Spiffy a car washing company and that\u2019s true, but until you really dig into the details, you don\u2019t understand how much technology we are building behind the scenes.\u00a0 Every time we make our customers lives a bit easier and reduce friction, there is a ton of intellectual property and innovation that happens behind the scenes to make that happen.<\/p>\n

How do you plan to invest the proceeds?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier I mentioned the four growth dimensions (new geographies, new services, new products, new \u2018channels\u2019)\u00a0\u00a0we focus on at Spiffy.<\/p>\n

Right now we are adding so much fleet business, we haven\u2019t had time to continue our geographic expansion.\u00a0 We should be through that by the fall and hope to open new geographies next year.<\/p>\n

How is business with your new device\/service \u201cSpiffy Blue\u201d going?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s going really well, we are getting great feedback from customers (currently have a 4.8 on Amazon) and have been working on taking the feedback and making the software component better.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK \u2013\u00a0Just as explorers once raced to find cities of gold, entrepreneurs like Scot Wingo are battling each other to win the race to market dominance for on-demand…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[82,56,39,79,80,81,83],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-angel-group","tag-angel-investing","tag-angel-network","tag-car-washes","tag-scot-wingo","tag-spiffy","tag-wolfpack-investor-netowrk"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Explorer\u2019 Wingo Talks Challenges, Choices in Growing Spiffy with $9M in New Funding - 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