Taking Small Businesses Digital with GoSite Founder Alex Goode

Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans contador quentan frijoles founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host Neil Bloom Startups get the party Startups get.

The welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neal Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cochrane Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121 year old family run private company that thinks in terms of decades in connecting communities a lot like we do in building a tech ecosystem. For years now, the local Cox business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota Quick pitch and in celebrating our technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards this October, we're very excited to kick off an entire month of virtual networking and learning at San Diego Startup Month with talks on sales, marketing, data, people, design, development and more. There's something for everyone in the startup and tech community. Drop in on the pitch competitions, get your LinkedIn reviewed, meet new colleagues and listen in on investor panels on the future of deep tech. Check out the schedule and more@sandiegostartupweek.com and thanks again to Cox Business for your partnership.

And welcome back to the Tacos in Tech Podcast. I am really excited. We've got a great CEO on the show today, but we've also got a co host, Ashok Kamal From Techcoast Angels. Shok, thanks for joining.

Good to be back. We're making a habit of it, Neil.

We are.

I always get the cool people to join, to join you with.

It's true. Which is Alex Good, CEO and co founder of gosi. Alex, thanks for being on.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

This has been a little bit in the making. We've been going back and forth, I think, most of this year and, you know, I think we waited for a bit of a momentum, huge momentum shift right now to bring you on and talk. I think this year's been momentous for you, which we're excited to jump into. Do you want to give us a quick overview of what GoSight is?

Definitely. So GoSight is a platform that helps small businesses transition from offline to online. So most of our customers are typically offline businesses. Think of your plumber, your handyman, or your auto repair shop or your landscaping company. These are businesses that are typically operating offline. And essentially we created a platform that helps them transition online. So our products consist of building them a modern website, helping them with digital presence, online reviews, then helping them interact with customers online through things like online booking and messaging, and then ultimately helping these small businesses actually acquire business and transact with customers online. So our platform is really intuitive. It's really boiled down and digestive for a small business. We want to make it easy for them to use. And we're focused right now on helping small businesses navigate the whole Covid situation. With COVID forcing a lot of businesses to close their physical doors, we're helping them open up online.

Wow. Incredible. Pretty impactful right now. How did you get into this? Did you have a small business previously or what was the impetus?

So I grew up around small businesses. So my, my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, they all own and operated small businesses. So growing up, essentially from the time I was in diapers, I was working for the family businesses. My parents ran a home goods and furnishing store and they also ran a plant nursery. So basically growing up, I was always working for the family businesses. Did that all growing up. And then when I got into college at University of Michigan, I went to engineering school and started learning how to code and build websites. And I first started applying that to help the family businesses launch a web presence, launch a website. But then I started branching off and helping other businesses build and launch a website. So I did that all throughout college. Ended up moving out to San Diego after I graduated and shortly after moving out here, just really saw an opportunity to continue helping small businesses. So I launched GoSight was this first.

Business, like first thing you worked on right out of college.

I had some side businesses I was messing with while I was in college, but this was the first real business I launched and it was just me for our first year or so and then started hiring just as demand started building up and more and more small businesses started coming to me for help and we were sort of off to the races. We launched in 2013 and by late 2013, early 2014, we were already getting an office and starting to hire people.

So let's talk a little bit about those initial years. I know, Alex, when I met you, something didn't pass my sniff test before I actually met you in person. And that's, you know, kind of unusual. I, I got your deck. This was, you know, I guess around 2018. So you'd been working on the company. Like you said, it was just you for a while. Then, you know, you were kind of scrappy, you know, bootstrapping, building it up little by little. That was one of the first things that, you know, in the deck. It just didn't, you know, we're not used to sometimes as tech investors seeing these, you know, self, you know, sustaining high growth companies. So it was one of the initial yellow flags that just, it didn't make sense, it didn't mentally compute. This is a credit to you that again, you were kind of going outside the typical paradigm. So I know that we connected through Mike Koran as a connection, a friend to many of us. And you were starting to, I believe, raise your first, you know, kind of outside round of financing. And you invited me to come into your office. It wasn't the gorgeous office that you're, you know, sitting in today. It was another, you know, again, scrappy company, you know, V1 office. And I noticed that you had like 20, 30, I don't know the exact number of people in there working for you. And that was another one of the kind of didn't compute, you know, sort of mental models that, you know, I was struggling with. It wasn't until I sat down with you and I started to understand better how you were drawing from the university, for example, to get, you know, young talent in the company. How you had this focus on the typical mom and pop offline business and you were just delivering a better suite of tools that allowed you to gain market share in an otherwise difficult, often graveyard landscape. So talk us through a little bit those first few years when it was really you without the VCs that we'll talk about later on board building the company from scratch. And you know how you got it to that next level?

Yeah, no, that's great question. So we went through a lot of transitions in our early years. So when we first launched we were a completely different business model than we are today. We were a service based business. So we were running more of an agency model in really helping small businesses build out, launch a website. We were building all of our websites from scratch. We literally had no tech build out yet. And we were very hands on with our customers, very service oriented. And we ended up building out thousands of websites for these small businesses. And over our first few years we really started productizing what we were offering. And by 2016, 2017, as we started to grow the service business, we realized there was an opportunity to really start building out a better tech tech platform that helped these small businesses operate and really grow and run their business. So starting in 2017, that's what we set out to build. And we launched our first product on our SaaS platform in mid-2017, which was a drag and drop website builder. And then from there we launched a web presence management software which today we call placement. And then shortly after that we launched a review management software. So by the end of 2017 we realized that there was a massive opportunity to build a tech business, really build a SaaS business with a SaaS business model. And by the end of 2017 we made the decision to transition GoSight into being a pure SaaS business. So 2017 was a huge shift for us. And then as we got into 2018 we really started focusing on the SaaS business and we scaled the SaaS business from 0 to 2 million in ARR in that first 18 months or so. And in doing so we learned a ton. We were bootstrapped through the whole thing and I think just that bootstrap mentality and really making sure we were building a strong business with strong economics really helped us in those early years. We had no outside capital to rely on, we were just dependent on our own revenues. And I honestly think that was really important part of our, our growth journey. Just in making that part of our DNA and just the capital efficiency and the grit that our team has and just the early employees that we added to the team, many of them are still here today and a huge part of how we've gotten to this point today. So I think just going through that, that period before we raise any outside capital was a really important part and it's a huge reason why we've Been able to get to where we're at today.

Yeah. When as an entrepreneur you only eat if you kill. It's really powerful. Forcing function to learn how to build a real business.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It was a big part of our journey and a huge learning experience for us at the time.

So you're seeing a lot of interesting trends within small business, which is interesting. I'm curious, not just Covid only, but like what verticals small business are being attracted to this kind of product from the beginning. And how has it changed over time?

Yeah, it definitely has changed over time. We used to really help all small businesses out there. I think over the last year or so, we've really saw a demand in the market to help local service businesses. So that's anything from like your home service business like a handyman or a contractor, automotive services like auto repair, auto detailing, even health and wellness services like a nail salon or a yoga studio. We've honed in on this local services market. There's about 12 million of them in the US and we realized that there's not a lot of great options out there for them to really help them transition their operations and their business online. We saw great platforms out there like Shopify doing an excellent job at helping small businesses. But we realized that platforms like Shopify are really designed for small businesses that want to sell products online. And when we started looking and speaking with our customers, we realized our customers don't really sell products, they actually provide services to their customers. And when we really started honing in on that services market, we realized that there are a tremendous amount of local services all over the country and all over the world that really could use the help of a platform like GoSight. So we've really started to hone in on that market today.

So important, I mean, San Diego, I think is 98% small businesses is what they say. So obviously massive. But in the SaaS and B2B world, it's kind of a scramble to go get off of that, go get that low cost, low sale versus going upstream to enterprise. I'm sure you're itching at times to think about that. What have you heard from investors, especially venture capital? What are they saying about purely going after the S and P market?

It's one of my first questions when speaking with any investor. It's essentially a qualifying question because I've found that there is a group of investors that they won't touch anything to do with small business. It just doesn't fit into their model. They only want to invest in enterprise SaaS or other markets. But then there's this other group of investors that see the opportunity that we see in small business and that there's this huge, huge digital transformation going on in the market right now. And there's tens of millions of small businesses in the us, hundreds of millions globally, and there is a massive opportunity to help these small businesses transition more to digital. And there's certainly a great number of VCs that see that trend and a lot of great VCs that we've end up, ended up partnering with that are really excited about the opportunity of helping small businesses out there make this transition to digital and really helping them get their businesses onto some sort of tech or tech platform.

And I've felt the pain indirectly at least as well that you're illustrating, Alex. It's funny because sometime after I had met you and TCA was one of the prior round investors in the company, I was going and getting my, my wedding band fitted at a jewelry shop in Telmar. And I'm talking to the second gen son of the founder and he's telling me how he paid somebody to do some Facebook ads and they didn't work well. And he was struggling to kind of get the business up to par. And I say to him, oh, there's this company that I learned about recently, like here's the website, you know, fast forward. I believe he's now a gosite user. That's been a couple years ago. And I got my wedding band, you know, done there too. So it absolutely, you know, here I was speaking to, you know, now the, you know, let's say, management of that small business and to hear how difficult it was amidst everything they're doing, you know, they're dealing with real estate, this is brick and mortar. They're trying to figure out digital. They've got customers, they've got inventory. You know, it's not why you get into starting a small business, right. Like this is, you know, kind of the, the infrastructure that a lot of people don't have the sophistication to build. So that trend was already happening. And then Covid hits and you know, as we've seen with, you know, many businesses, either Covid has been a tailwind, a headwind or an execution. Here you are. And now all these businesses that have to go online by force, you know, are looking for a solution. What has it done for, you know, GoSight?

Yeah, I mean, when Covid hit, it was our number one priority to make sure we were doing everything possible to help all the Small businesses out there that were really at the time, well, even still today, just kind of scrambling to really figure out what adjustments they need to make to make sure that their business is able to sort of survive what has come to be a massive shift in the small business market. So what it's done for us is I think at the highest level, it's changed GoSight from being a nice to have to an absolute must have. And that's because these small businesses are now seeing that they, in order to interact with customers and attract new customers, sometimes in the physical or face to face world, that can't necessarily happen, at least not today. So they're looking for other means to be able to attract customers and being able to interact with customers. And that's where our platform really steps in and enables them to digitally engage with customers. And for that reason for us, it's definitely been a tailwind and we've seen a very strong acceleration and just new merchants signing up, new merchants joining our platform. And it's been really exciting to hear more of the stories about small businesses that have actually become stronger or become even larger, better businesses because of some of the shifts of, and some of the shifts that they're making and really adopting new technologies, adopting digital and really incorporating digital into their day to day business operations, which has now made them a stronger business.

And it's obviously done a lot to your company too, right. Having to work remotely digitally, just like the businesses you're serving. But you also, you know, you've had growth for quite a while. Were you already fundraising before COVID happened or did you kind of take advantage once you saw this accelerant?

We were fundraising. So we were fundraising in the very earlier part of this year and we actually did our initial close on our Series A right ahead of COVID But since then we've seen a lot of action on the investor market of just more and more investors seeing this trend, this transition to digital and wanting to explore how platforms like GoSight can help small businesses because they see opportunity there. So from a capital or venture capital perspective, I think Covid has put GoSight in a stronger position. But I think regardless, we were expecting to see this sort of digital transformation. I think a lot of us were expecting this over several years and Covid has really been a catalyst for that and really accelerated that. So I think a lot of VCs are seeing, hey, this trend is something that we predicted, but the time is now and, and they're looking where to place their bets.

Yeah. And I think what's really great about your fundraise. I mean, it's not specific to having local investors, but what's great is seeing how much local invested in a local company. Right. I think I'm going to name some. You tell me if I'm missing Ancona Capital, Sarah Ventures with Steve Beck being local. Longley Capital too. A lot of tetcos Angels members. Anyone else are missing from a local perspective.

Kesha Regionally Co Fund.

Yeah, Regionally Co Fund, which, I mean.

That we could just stop right there. That's what, five of, you know, SoCal's leading seed stage in series A. Now that you got Ancona and Longley shout out to Brian and Denise respectively involved in the syndicate, I mean, that's got to be one of the most collaborative local fundraising efforts in a long time. And again, after you bootstrapped the company and built it as a product guy with a great team to get all those people on board, it wasn't an accident that it laid out this way.

Yeah, we were really excited over the last couple years to partner with some of these great investors and we were really excited to pull most of our capital from Southern California. So that was something that we, we did set out to do initially and really happy with the group that we were able to pull together.

So what is, what is going forward look like? Have you accelerated some product development because of just needing the digital transformation and take us through like the next 12 months maybe?

Definitely. Yeah. We're continuing to grow the company and grow the team. A lot of our focus right now is on product development and engineering. There's an enormous amount of things that we want to continue to build and provide to these small businesses. So our roadmap from here on out goes out for years and we're really using this time right now to accelerate as much of that as possible. So we're continuing to build our product and engineering teams and just really focus right now on executing and building great product.

And so if I'm that jewelry service store in Del Mar or the cleaning company in La Mesa, Alex, and I'm listening to this podcast or I'm reading about you in the newspaper as there's been articles or learning about GoSight on the web, what's the best reason for me to go to GoSight.com and let your company get me online? For the now 100% digital age, GoSight.

Is going to create your digital storefront. And today that's the most important thing, especially with COVID forcing a lot of these businesses to close their physical doors. Go site is the easiest way to launch a storefront online. And we care so much about helping our small business customers. We're going to continue to build out great things to help great small business owners like your friend at the jewelry store. And we're here to help. I mean, since day one, that's sort of the Genesis or origin of GoSight is really just helping small businesses. And I think right now is a time where small business owners do need help. There's so much change going on rapidly across the world, across the country, changes that are rapid. And small business owners, the thing about small business owners is they're running their business every single day. They don't have a ton of time to deal with all this tech stuff and that's really where we step in and help them. These business owners are in the trenches, they're behind the counters, they're on the field, they're running their business day to day. They're the marketer, they're the accountant, they're the operator. They're literally doing everything and wearing 10 hats. The last thing they have time to do is go online and worry about what to do about their website. So that's really where we step in and really we're there to help all these small businesses.

Well, we hope we will definitely help promote, put some notes in the show, notes that we can direct people here so we can help people keep running their business. But I want to get to know you in San Diego. What brought you out here initially?

Yeah, the sunshine for sure. I grew up in Michigan so was very used to the snow and the cold weather and knew I wanted to get out of the way out to the West Coast. So I ended up moving out here and initially I was actually supposed to move to Los Angeles for an opportunity there and came to San Diego. I have some family in San Diego and came here to visit them. Also have a couple friends here and when I got to San Diego there was just absolutely no way I was leaving and I ended up never leaving and decided to start setting up shop here. And not too long after that is when I launched GoSight.

So back in the early days when you're, what is it? Ramen quota shock when you're, well, first.

You'Re ramen, like not even, you know, at the store shelf. Then eventually you get ramen profitable because Alex, if I recall your background sort of in design and your, you know, capable of coding and certainly of creating elegant looking designs. So you were able to save some money, which is another great lesson for entrepreneurs. Look if you have a lot of the skills to get it to that ramen profitability. Ramen profitability is not automatic, let's be clear. Make sales and get customers to get to that point. But that's the first step. Right? And you were able to do a lot of that work through the agency that preceded kind of gosight and then the first kind of generation of Go say definitely.

Yeah. I mean I was building every single website I was selling, I was providing customer service, really wearing all the hats. So I was a, I was a small business owner and well, still am and really focused on pretty much having to do everything and that's how you have to get started and get, start getting dollars through the door. So yeah, for our first several, nearly almost year, I was doing everything including building all the websites.

We may not be known for our ramen as much, but maybe our tacos. You can be taco profitable too. They definitely still fuel us even when we're raising later rounds too. Do you have a favorite taco place?

I do. So I love tacos and I would say my favorite taco spot has been Fat Fish. When I first landed in in San Diego, I first lived in Pacific beach and commonly found myself at Fat Fish. They have amazing tacos. Recommend their avocado taco. So I'm going to say Fat Fish is, is definitely my favorite.

That's a good one. Hasn't been mentioned yet. It's unique. I like it.

And there's no wrong answers to this question, right, Neil?

There is nothing I love.

Yeah, I love tacos and I love what San Diego has to offer in terms of taco cuisine.

Yep, we've got it all for sure. Well Alex, we really appreciate you jumping on the pod with us. We're excited for all your growth. We're excited to keep watching it too and be a part of it. So thanks for joining us. Thanks. Ashok coming on.

Thank you both.

Thanks everyone.

I appreciate it. Guys.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by copying expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music and thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eealbloom as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

You know we got it it. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech. You know we got it.

Hey.