Spiffy

Scott Wingo had already built and exited several companies, including Stingray Software, Auction Rover, and ChannelAdvisor, which went public in 2013. At 46, he said he was no longer scratching his entrepreneurial itch as the chairman of a public company. He started testing ideas that turned into Spiffy, a car wash company. The insight came from customer demand: people wanted their cars cleaned more often, and the service was something they only got to when it moved up their task list.

Spiffy launched in 2014 as an MVP app. Scott was an operator as well as a founder: he already owned two tunnel car washes, which taught him that weekends and evenings were peak times and weekdays were slow. The team's first major discovery was that customers wanted their car washed while at work, when their cars were idle for roughly eight hours a day. Spiffy chose a full-stack model, employing its own technicians and owning its vans and assets rather than running a marketplace of 1099 contractors.

When Spiffy's team visited office parks, security staff repeatedly turned them away for four reasons: the detailers seemed unvetted, their vans looked suspicious, they lacked insurance, and they left chemical spills in parking lots. Spiffy addressed each concern. Once it was allowed in, the team visited local businesses weekly and built recurring revenue. Scott said some office park locations consistently generated $500 a week, and others reached $1,000 to $2,000 a week.

The biggest win was the office-park recurring model, which Scott says makes up about 70% of revenue. Spiffy also trained employees to make the service a weekly habit. The model still runs pay-as-you-go, with customers paying after service completion, although subscriptions were requested by customers and were being worked on.

Spiffy had crossed a $2 million annual run rate and was growing more than 100% year over year. The team includes about 20 people in the office and roughly 40 full-time technicians, with up to 60 including part-time staff. Spiffy closed a $7.5 million Series A and said it was still looking for outside investors. Scott's stated goal was to grow to $100 million quickly across 20 to 30 markets, then choose between a strategic sale and an IPO.