Bootstrapping From Oklahoma: Robin Smith, CEO of WeGoLook (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. Let’s go a bit granular here. You started in 2009 you said?

Robin Smith: I formed the LLC late 2009. It took about a year to recruit my first group of lookers. I built the platform and my website. It took about a year for me to do all that. It was myself and a software developer that worked on all of that for a year.

Sramana Mitra: You were doing all this in Oklahoma?

Robin Smith: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: This year when you were doing all this groundwork, were you financing the project yourself?

Robin Smith: Yes. My husband and one of his business partners helped in the funding, which wasn’t a lot in the beginning. It wasn’t a huge investment upfront. Then as we grew, that investment became quite a bit more.

Sramana Mitra: At the end of 2009, you setup the LLC. It took you a year to get this software done and this first batch of lookers on the platform. What training did these lookers need? Were you providing any kind of training? What was the criteria for selecting these lookers or preparing these lookers to be able to do what you wanted them to do?

Robin Smith: There wasn’t a lot of training and I’ll tell you a couple of reasons why. One is they’re all independent contractors. You can’t really provide training. You can provide tips and detailed instructions on what the client is requesting. As far as training, you can’t really do that with sub-contractors. Our mobile app now walks them through what exactly to do. It’s very easy to follow.

Sramana Mitra: Isn’t that different from product to product? What photos to take is different, right?

Robin Smith: Absolutely, which is why our platform is very intuitive. I can talk about that in depth after I answer your first question of how we choose the lookers. We, obviously, were looking for people who are dependable and professional. In that first group, we actively recruited people who we thought fit that mold. We knew they were already out and about. Field inspectors were already out and about. We’ve expanded our horizons in our recruiting.

For heavy equipment, we’ve been able to recruit veterans who are classified in heavy equipment operation. In every category that we have over the last five years, we have a really fantastic community of lookers with various types of skills. We have moms. We have pastors. We have school teachers. We do a background check on all of our lookers. We have a team which does more due diligence background check.

Sramana Mitra: In 2010, how many lookers did you have?

Robin Smith: We had around 4,500 after that first year.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping From Oklahoma: Robin Smith, CEO of WeGoLook
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