Heroes in Business - Wes Schroll CEO Fetch, 4Billion in receipts, Americas number 1 rewards app 17Million users

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

Get rewarded for what you buy. Wes Schroll CEO Fetch, 4Billion in receipts, Americas number 1 rewards app 17Million users is interviewed by David Cogan, famous host of the Heroes Show and founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.  www.eliances.com

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. All right, so welcome back to the show again. Very excited. A lot going on here. By the way, thank you for the feedback we had when I recently had on. Are you ready for this? Recently had on the founder of Craigslist and the founder of Angie's List.

Put those two together. Make sure you check out past episodes by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. The only place where entrepreneurs align and check out and click on radio to listen to those past episodes all right are you ready for this what is 151 billion receipts submitted what company would be tied to that well it's america's number one rewards app. That's right. I mean, we're talking just so many billion. What is it?

18 plus million users submitting these receipts. Well, we've got with us Wes Schroll. He is the CEO of Fetch. And you can reach him by going to Fetch.com. Wes, your company is blown up by just gazillions. David, thanks first of all for having me on the show today. Super excited to be here. And yeah, it's been a wild ride since we launched back in 2017. And the numbers just keep going up and to the right, which is exactly how we want to have it, just like the superhero, you know, flying away up to the right. That's so awesome to hear and that i mean

so talk to us though kind of like how did this even all come to be like what was the idea of well let's just you know figure out something and do something with receipts yeah so i actually first came up with the idea while i was going to school at university of wisconsin madison i was in between my freshman and sophomore year i just moved out of a dorm where you're fed every meal in a cafeteria and into an apartment where I have to go and do all the grocery shopping for myself for the first time ever and trying to figure out ways of saving money. And to do that, I figured out there was actually a ton of hoops you had to jump through. Everything from figuring out what store do you go to on which day of the week based on what items they have on sale. So you have to sign up for the loyalty program when you get there. And even when I got home and I'm putting away the items, I see

my Coke rewards, Kellogg's rewards, all these other rewards programs that the brands are running. And a couple of weeks into that experience, I just got really frustrated. If these companies are going to go turn around and market to me, telling me how much they care about me as a customer and want to earn my loyalty, why am I the one who's having to jump through all the hoops? So I wanted to create a system that would put the consumer at the center and allow companies to prove their loyalty to their consumers. And what we find is by doing that and flipping that equation on its head, as companies do come onto the Fetch platform, reward consumers for their behavior and show their loyalty to the consumer, of course, the consumer turns around and spends more with that company. So that's been a little bit of the journey over the last couple of years

since I ended up dropping out at UW to start the business and chase after that idea. That's amazing. But how do you know when you've got something? So you start this, you've got the idea, you get it rolling. But at what point were you like, okay, You start this, you've got the idea, you get it rolling. But at what point were you like, okay, it's something here? The first four years were extremely challenging. We couldn't even figure out the right technology to make it work. The ability to actually take a picture of a receipt and pull off all the information and understand that information so you can actually run a system like this is very complex

and difficult. And it's taken us hundreds of engineers to even get to the level that we're at today. So when you first start, you obviously don't have those types of resources. So for the first four years, we actually were kind of pivoting around the product, trying to figure out another way into it to just get our feet under the ground. But in 2017, we actually got far enough along with receipt reading that we thought we could launch a product. And I actually knew we hit product market fit only a couple months after launching the initial product. And it was funny, everyone always asks, how did you know that you hit product market fit? And I actually learned

through a failure. So when we launched the app, we had a huge wave of consumers like month two, who came into the program, maybe it was like 10,000 people signed up because we went on Fox and friends. And all of a sudden, people started submitting a lot of receipts, and we completely fell over. Our technology wasn't working. We could not process the receipts. It was taking us weeks to figure out each receipt that a person was taking a picture of versus the promise that we gave them of ours. And yet people kept scanning. And you'd ask them, like, why are you doing this? The product's not working. Why are you still using it? They're like, well, it's so easy, and you'll get to it eventually why not and that was the key for us we knew we had product market fit because even when the product failed consumers wanted it to

work so badly so that they kept using it and from then on out we've just focused on continuing to not let up on the promise that we have to the consumer so when you deliver them a working product it's amazing people will stick around and obviously use it more and more all right so walk us through the basics somebody purchased something they get a receipt then what do they do yeah so completely free app for anyone to be able to download works anywhere across the us and every time you get a transaction whether that is a printed out physical receipt that you're getting from a store or you get emailed a receipt online to your email or maybe complete an Amazon transaction, you can submit that into Fetch by either using the camera to take a picture of the receipt, or you can connect your digital accounts and we'll auto

pull in those transactions for you. We then in real time are able to reward you with a currency called FetchPoint for just doing that base behavior of submitting the receipt. But also, if you buy any of our partner products, we have partnered with hundreds of brands, retailers, restaurants that will incrementally reward you more and more every time you submit a transaction that includes their products. And then you accrue all of these fetch points across all of our different partners. And you can turn around and redeem those on hundreds of options, everything from virtual gift cards, you can donate them to charity. You can enter into sweepstakes, all kinds of different things that you can do with your points. And again, you're earning them across hundreds of different partners that we have fetched back to the table for you.

So you earn them very quickly, much faster than any one program would ever be able to deliver. Where do you want to take this next? I mean, you know, again, you're continually growing by leaps and bounds. Where do you want to take this next? I mean, you know, again, you're continually growing by leaps and bounds, right? I mean, we're talking, I mean, again, by the way, we have with us Wes Stroll, CEO of Fetch. Fetch.com is where you can reach him. America's number one rewards app. They're huge. I mean, just 151 plus billion in receipts submitted. And it's by the time this shows is is over it's just going to keep growing from there it will and yeah as we think to the future i mean right now 18 million monthly active users who are submitting all of those you know transactions that you're talking about david and what's amazing is when we look at who our consumers are and compare it to just who the average u.s household is we see that it's really representative, which means from our perspective, we're actually still really under penetrated into getting people aware of what Fetch is and how it can save them money for free just by using it and have fun while using it.

So over the next couple of years, our goal is to continue to expand the amount of people who know about Fetch and can get value from using it. The more people that end up using Fetch, the more that companies will be attracted to it and want to reward consumers. And it's a flywheel that just keeps going. We've also done things to make the app more approachable. So we've launched it in Spanish end to end, everything from when you first sign up all the way through to bilingual support. So we want to make the app as authentic and approachable for everyone that we have using it across the US. And over the next two to three years, as we do double or triple, we'll have interest to look up and go to other countries because there's no reason why people in other countries won't want a fun, easy way to save

money. Excellent. What's your revenue model? So I actually love talking about it because we think we've created a system that's really a win-win-win. So when you log into the app, you'll see all kinds of different offers that are made available to each customer. They're unique per customer, and they're coming from things like brands like Gatorade, or maybe they're coming from restaurants like Wendy's. And the way that they're doing that is we utilize all the scans that you have to identify, hey, you buy sports drinks and you're switching back and forth between Powerade and Gatorade. So we're going to say, hey, if you just switch a little bit more to be Gatorade, we'll give you 2,000 points, $2 worth of rewards there. And then only when you submit receipts proving that you now shifted and you're buying more of the Gatorade product, we then charge

Gatorade for those points plus a markup so that when you start earning more points as a consumer, that earns more revenue and our partners are generating more sales. It's not like our consumers are magically spending more money. They're just shifting over to the companies that are willing to reward them. So it's really a win-win-win and a pure pay for performance model for our partners,

which they love. And for our consumers, I can look them in the eye and say, hey, when you earn more points, we earn more revenue. So we directly want you to earn more. Awesome. What's the, is there like average profile of one of your people, one of the clients, one of the people that are actually submitting these receipts? Do you see it various ages? Is there an age thing, income level? I mean, like, have you done any study with that?

I'd be curious to know. Yeah, I mentioned a little bit earlier, it is shockingly representative of your average US household. So we'll compare to US census data and look at who our average consumer is. By geography, by age, income, ethnicity, we are just as representative within a couple percentage points of what you would expect your average US household to look like. So for us, we love that because it means we're not over penetrated into any one demographic, but yet we're slightly penetrated into almost all of them. And we can now grow across all of them as well with the current product that we have. And that's why I don't think we're seeing any slowdown of growth rate. How about help? I mean, you probably got a lot of employees, a lot of engineers. I mean, with everything going on, how do you find them?

Yeah, it's always been a challenge. We're about 750 employees that are across the country that we have. We have a couple of key hubs. So our headquarters is in Madison, Wisconsin. Our largest office is Chicago. And our third largest is actually Birmingham, Alabama. So we believe that there is talent anywhere and everywhere across the US. What's important is that we find the right people who culturally match what we're looking for. We're looking for people who are hungry to move quick, who are looking to innovate, who want to be collaborative team players.

And we look to reward them with setting the market for what pay would look like, giving them upside and equity in the business. And by doing those things and trust, we give people trust and autonomy to do things, exciting things. And by doing those things and trust, we give people trust and like autonomy to do things, exciting things. And by doing that, we see we have incredible employee retention and satisfaction. So we think that as long as we treat everyone the way that, you know, I think I would want to be treated at any given company, then it pays itself forward. People understand and believe

that we put our actions where our words are and, you know, they value that. And then that attracts a lot of people then tell their friends and family about the company. And then that helps build, you know, excitement, more inbound qualified candidates for us to hire. So, yeah, it's been always is a challenge. It's something you have to compete with a lot of other great companies out there. But if you are really focused on what's core and makes you unique, we that works for us excellent all right we got time for one more question here is young adults what's the secret sauce what's the secret of being able to you know uh that you can give of advice for young adults that want to make their mark certainly like you might have made your mark continue to make your mark and growing this company leaps and bounds. What's that secret part that, how do they find it?

Yeah, I always tell people that you often see from the outside that it must be a straight line from starting it to where the company's at now. And the problem is if you go into starting anything, because a lot of people are willing to take the leap and go and try something, right? But then they don't realize just how many ups and downs there are. I remember early on when I first dropped out and started the business, the ups and downs that I would have from thinking, oh, this will be a billion dollar company to thinking, oh no, my company's going to go under. That was hourly. That was happening depending on what email I was getting at the time from what potential client. And then over time, as you keep growing the company, then it happens daily, then it happens weekly, and now it's like monthly.

But that's okay. Don't ride too high on the ups. Don't ride too low on the downs. Try to find a way to stay overall level. And that's what's going to give you the conviction to stick with it. Versus if you're trying to chase those, you just won't give it enough time

for you to be able to see the whole picture, pivot the business around to be able to find the right go path forward. No matter how good your intentions are, how hard you work, I have found that that's the most important thing you can do when trying to start a business. Well said. Excellent. Well, thank you again, Wes Troll, CEO of Fetch. Go to Fetch.com now and submit those receipts. That's right, they're the America's number one rewards. Continue to stay tuned as we have next coming on, member Mark Victor Hanson, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Gotta dance with me too though. All right, Wes, good.