Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You said you joined the company where they were going to do homebuilder, but then the company imploded. Did you talk about one or two companies?

Peter Ord: One company. The company I joined had a product that catered to automotive dealers. They also aspired to build a similar product for homebuilders.

Sramana Mitra: That automotive product did work. In that implementation, you learned that the implementation was cumbersome and complex. Is that what you’re saying?

Peter Ord: Right. The only reason I shared the homebuilding aspect was that’s what led me there. The car dealership product took off and we never got around to building the homebuilding product, which was a blessing and a curse.

Sramana Mitra: What was the name of that company?

Peter Ord: DealerSocket.

Sramana Mitra: What are the years we are talking about?

Peter Ord: 2007 to 2017.

Sramana Mitra: A long time.

Peter Ord: I was the 20th employee and I left when there were close to 3,000 employees.

Sramana Mitra: That was all happening in Utah?

Peter Ord: This was based in San Clemente, California. They had moved me to Utah because we out recruited our area in California. They moved me and my family to Utah where we hired 700 people in the span of three years. I, then, decided in 2017 that this challenge of our implementation not being transparent was worth jumping off the cliff and starting my own company.

Sramana Mitra: Double-click down on that issue. What wasn’t working?

Peter Ord: There are three questions that our customers at DealerSocket would always ask whenever they bought our product. They were pretty consistent. I managed the sales team at the time I left. That was over 200 people. My salespeople, when they sold the product, would always be asked, “When am I going to get the product I bought? Who has the ball? Who needs to do what?”

The other question is pretty interesting – What did I even purchase? We noticed that the contract signers often remove themselves from the implementation experience. Oftentimes, you’d get on the welcome call and the contract signer wouldn’t be present. Our project manager would then be put in a situation where they have to resell the product to the customer side team that never participated in the sales process.

Those questions were pivotal to us solving in order to have a successful partnership. I looked at a lot of B2C processes. For example, Amazon. I don’t call Jeff Bezos to ask where my package is. He gives me a portal where I can see where my package is. You look at Domino’s pizza tracker. They tell me it’s 15 minutes from being out of the oven.

There are all sorts of processes that happen in the B2C realm where consumers are kept up to date. Seldom do we give a credit card before we know when we’re going to get the good or service that we purchased. When you jump to the B2B realm, we’re oftentimes at the mercy of a project manager sending us a spreadsheet or updating via email.

While in my last company, all 40 project managers followed the same internal process. Externally, they offered 40 different customer experiences. I started with the goal of answering those three questions. Can I find a product that can tell me where I’m at, when I’m going to get it, and what I bought? I couldn’t find that in the space. Then I evaluated that if I can find this product, then I can standardize the external experience. If the external experience is measurable, then I can optimize it.

I went on that search to help DealerSocket find that product. I didn’t find it. I had a long conversation with my wife on whether we really wanted to start our own company. I got to the point where I decided that it was worth it. I quit my job at DealerSocket after 10 or 11 years. I started GuideCX in December of 2017.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord
1 2 3 4 5