By Allan Maurer
RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC—Scot Wingo, co-founder and CEO of RTP-based ChannelAdvisor, who is among the top executives appearing at the Second Annual Southeast Venture Conference this week, says he helps new entrepreneurs as a way of paying back the community that helped him.
Wingo, who has participated in Southern Capitol Venture’s “Calling All Entrepreneurs” program and is active in entrepreneurial organizations and events, says of the Research Triangle, “We have a great community here.”
People such as Richard Holcomb, a partner with Durham-based Aurora Funds, former CEO and current chair of Strikeiron, and founder and CEO of Haht before its sale to GSX, helped Wingo early on. “I want to be sure to pay that time back,” he says.
Wingo says his advice to startup founders and execs focuses on “some things around how to raise money, how to refine a pitch. Every company is a little different. You have to put your best foot forward.”
Wingo, who co-founded AuctionRover, the predecessor to ChannelAdvisor during the Internet boom, raised a round and sold the company.
In 2001, a spinout relaunched the company as ChannelAdvisor. It raised its first institutional round in 2004, then a large $30 million Series CE last year and a total of about $60 million.
“I’ve interacted with venture capitalists enough to know some of how they think,” he says. “I can put on that hat. A lot of times you only get one shot with a VC.” When he helps other entrepreneurs, he says, “I can be that VC and ask the same questions the VC would, giving them a dry run.”
He says he can also act as a sounding board on operational issues, suggesting, “Which is the right path to go down and why.”
Another area where he can help, he notes, is recruiting. “I know most of the software side tech execs in the Triangle,” he says. “I may not know a specific person, but I can send them in the right direction.”
Wingo says ChannelAdvisor hasn’t seen any effects from the much ballyhooed economic downturn as yet and in fact may be partly insulated from it.
ChannelAdvisor combines best practices, innovative software and integrated technology to help retailers maximize their profits across multiple e-commerce channels – including marketplaces like eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com; comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, Shopzilla and Pricegrabber.com; and across all the major search engines.
“One thing that counteracts an economic downturn is that eBay is counter-cyclical,” says Wingo. “As wallets get tight, people want to sell online and when they buy, get out a magnifying glass and look at every penny,” he says. “If they can’t afford the latest, greatest thing, they do substitutions and buy an older model. And eBay is great for that sort of thing.”
So, he says, “As things get tighter for retailers, it works to our advantage. A world where a company wants to maximize revenue and ROI makes our phones ring.”
Wingo says he loves his industry and still sees “good problems to be solved. There are a lot of interesting social networking implications where we are just in the early innings of the game,” he adds.
ChannelAdvisor sells Software as a Service and always has, although in earlier days they called the company an “application service provider.” SaaS is necessary to ChannelAdvisor, Wingo says, “Because product is driven by the needs of customers and has to change on a daily basis. So it has to be hosted. But that also means there are no IT requirements on our customers.
“We can address the biggest retailers down to the mom and pop company. They don’t need an IT guy or system administrator, just a PC and a browser to use our software.”
Investors tend to like the recurring revenue model SaaS provides, he notes, because it’s predictable and more stable than selling licensed software for large upfront fees.
Wingo will be talking about SaaS and its advantages at the SEVC conference.
On the Web: www.channeladvisor.com
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
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