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Editorial by Willson Cross, GoFetch Co-Founder & CEO: 'From Ambition to Result - My Startup Story From Founding to Exit'
Friday, June 15, 2018Company Profile | Follow Company
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Editor's Note: This is an editorial column by Willson Cross, Co-founder and CEO, GoFetch Technologies, re-published with permission of the author.
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Vancouver, BC, June 15, 2018--(T-Net)-- Willson Cross was the founder and CEO of Vancouver-based GoFetch Technologies (developers of a leading Canadian pet services platform) which raised approximately $3.5 million in funding from Angels, micro-VCs, and Family Offices and scaled its operations and business across Canada, and which reported it has now been acquired this month by Future Pet.
This scrappy company went up against major funded US competitors including Wag! (who raised $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund), and Rover.com (who raised $155 million last month, and has now raised over $310 million in total).
Willson shares a fascinating post and perspective below about his three year journey as a Co-Founder and CEO of this fast growing funded startup - from raw startup, to ultimate acquisition.
Willson is only now 25 years old (even after a 3 year startup journey), and this detailed "post-acquisition" reflection and perspective is a fascinating, interesting and worthwhile weekend read in our view.
(especialy for anyone involved in startups or who has founded a company, or who has thought about founding a company or becoming an entrepreneur - especially in tech).
This post was originally published by the author on LinkedIn, and can be read in its entirety below. Enjoy!
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Willson Cross, Co-founder and CEO, GoFetch Technologies
From Ambition to Result - My startup story from founding to exit
I'm excited to announce that my company, GoFetch, has been acquired (Future Pet Animal Health Inc.). I have been wanting to write about this experience for the past month, but needed some time to reflect on my feelings. Thankfully, the tears were very short-lived; they ended right after I realized how much I have learned and how big of an achievement GoFetch, and the work of its team, actually was. Now, with a clear head, I can share what I have learned and why the past three plus years of my life have been an absolute blast.
Boarding Delta 5003 in New York on a Friday night in March, I left Deep Singh, our Sr. Vice President of Operations (formally a Sr. Director at Ola, the leading ridesharing app in India) in the city for the weekend and headed to Vegas for a "mental retreat". Him and I had been scrunched together in the back row of a Uber SUVs for the past five days of our VC meetings but now, when I landed in Vegas, I was alone. I called our major investor to tell him not enough firms were interested in a Canadian, fast-following, online marketplace and the direction of the business would need to change. This was only weeks after a competitor, Wag!, raised $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund, a $100 billion fund that wants to be the largest shareholder in 100 technology companies around the world.
At this point, the company achieved some great things:
We also covered a lot of the components that make great peer-to-peer online marketplaces. We were a "market-maker" in the sense that we were tapping into a market that has virtually never used an app to find a dog walker or sitter, similar to the way in which companies like Uber and Airbnb accessed previously untapped markets in ridesharing and vacation rentals. I could literally write pages and pages about online marketplaces (and I have), but you can read more on that here.
As I entered the Wynn Resort in Vegas, I didn't even realize my shirt was inside-out until bumping into an investor's wife. After a brief "hi and bye", I spent the rest of the weekend in my hotel room (with the occasional trip to the bar and pool) plotting options for the future of the business.
Venture markets are very analytical, and even more analytical if you are a single-country, fast-follower, online marketplace with two Unicorns on your completive map (Rover.com and Wag!) with a 25 year old CEO wanting to do a Series A.
All major Venture Capital firms would meet with me because funding flows to the pet-technology space have been red hot. However, the "venture math" never made sense. Remember, most venture firms are looking for their investment to return the amount of their entire fund in usually 5-7 years. Don't get me wrong, I realize every firm has their own economics, but for simplicity, I am being generic.
At this point, bets have already been made on Rover.com, DogVacay.com, and Wag!. Rover.com then purchased DogVacay in an all stock deal... yikes! Not to mention the competitive dynamics that have started to play out in other verticals such as ridesharing, food delivery, home services, vacation rentals, etc...
A lot of people have asked me about these competitive dynamics, mentioning that there can me many online marketplace winners in a single vertical. I agree to a certain point. In reality, the nuance of TAM (total addressable market) in online marketplaces plays a huge role. In most heavily competitive verticals, let's use ridesharing as an example, you will usually see at most only two global players and then one single county player.
And, although GoFetch is growing fast across Canada, there are only 36 million people in the country. This makes it tough to see how big the business can be and how big it actually needs to scale to before becoming profitable. The reason single country players such as Lyft or Ola survive is simply the TAM - plus product market fit and venture dollars - India has 1.3 billion people; and it was a great move for Lyft to go deep / play in the "middle of the field" in the US, owning 60 cities with pink moustaches.
In sum, we had a few directions (perhaps better know as choices):
I was lucky that all my shareholders and board had different "funding economics" associated with ROI and IRR metrics as oppose to typical venture funds.
By the end of the week, I had Non-Disclosure Agreements signed with every player in our space, including a strategic partner we had at the time, Future Pet - a partner that happened to share an investor in common with GoFetch.
I even engaged a Private Equity firm to run a deal hunt.
It was on the flight home from Vegas where I started reflecting on what we, as a team and company, have accomplished and what the future will hold for the company my co-founder and I started nearly four years ago. I have since learned that the ability to reflect is one of the most powerful attributes anyone can have, no matter what their craft. I have also found that building a company has a very special way of teaching oneself about life.
If you're still reading, I think you'll find the below interesting - apologies if you don't:
GoFetch eventually got acquired by Future Pet Animal Health. And I am super stoked about it. The co-founders, Mike Sherman and Adam Little, are really (like, really) smart people. They are doing something sufficiently different in the pet-technology space and will be leveraging our technology, customers, brand, and expertise to bring their business to the next level. The GoFetch brand will continue to grow across Canada, and one of my largest, former shareholders now sits on their board. I get to Advise them and help where I can. I will also be helping some other startups, something I am very lucky to have the opportunity to do through Cross Venture Group (thanks to the folks that chipped in for proprietary deal flow - stay scrappy!).
It's also noteworthy to understand that GoFetch shareholders got an average of 235% return on capital from the founding of the company to it's exit.
I'm currently taking sometime to think about the next journey hence my cheesy LinkedIn title.
Willson
PS - I want to say thank you to everyone that worked for GoFetch (you folks are family and I miss you), all my investors for their capital, expertise, and belief, my lawyers and accountants (personal and corporate), mum, dad, and brother, and all strategic partners that helped us along the way.
Company Snapshot |
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GoFetch Technologies (Acquired by Future Pet, June 2018)
Vancouver (New Media)
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