Bootstrapping From Oklahoma: Robin Smith, CEO of WeGoLook (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did these people find out about your service – that they could join as lookers?

Robin Smith: There are national property inspection companies and it wasn’t too far out of the realm of getting that same group of people. I didn’t want to launch with WeGoLook until I had the platform ready and I had the website the way I wanted it. We created a website and called it HouseLookers.net. We created this landing page. It was several pages but it was mostly landing page saying, “We want to sign you up.” Then I would go to different forums where there were real estate professionals or field inspectors. Those were the people we imported over into WeGoLook. Then I made an announcement to these contacts in my database saying, “HouseLookers.net is now WeGoLook. We are going to be looking at vehicles and heavy equipment.”

Sramana Mitra: We are in 2010. You have 4,500 lookers. What about actual looker jobs? How did you do there?

Robin Smith: At the end of 2010, we didn’t have much business. It was in 2011 when we started getting some business. 2012 was when we really knew the business model was going to work. In 2011, we probably did less than a hundred thousand dollars in the first full year.

Sramana Mitra: These were consumer B2C projects?

Robin Smith: Not all of them. Probably about 75%. We did grow our marketing. That’s where we had different types of small banks or small companies who needed us to do repeat tasks or repeat looks. We might have somebody who would order something like 40 a month but they would order it every month. It wasn’t until 2012 that we had some of the larger banks use us.

Sramana Mitra: How did the first bank project come about?

Robin Smith: It was just someone calling and saying, “I read you guys performed property inspections. We’re going to need some properties looked at,”

Sramana Mitra: It was inbound. The bank came to you.

Robin Smith: Yes, everything that we’ve done so far has been inbound organic growth. I’m actually right at this moment on my way to Phoenix for my very first conference where I’ll be promoting the company. I’m pretty excited about that. We’re now at $6 million run rate with a projection of $10 to $11 million for next year. We’re doing really well now.

It did take me a couple of years to get my foothold. This might help some entrepreneurs. When I first started out, I really thought that the message that we had was we can go look at properties, cars, and online dates. It was only when I began focusing on one vertical at a time that I started to get traction.

Sramana Mitra: Which one was that?

Robin Smith: I started with property because that’s the one that a lot of people can relate to because there are national property inspection companies. Then I went to automotive. Then some heavy equipment. Now, we’re in the insurance space. What’s interesting is that there’s no platform that puts everything together and uses this crowdsourcing model. People are starting to understand that the crowd can be dependable – that they can actually perform. That’s where we’re at right now.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping From Oklahoma: Robin Smith, CEO of WeGoLook
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