Kevin Mackey has been around the block when it comes to starting a business.
Mackey, a University of Dayton graduate, has his fingerprints on an octet of Cincinnati-based businesses like Urban Farming Initiative, a company that converts unused commercial spaces into urban farms and food hubs; Alveo Health, a modern system for processing health care claims; and Coterie Insurance. Coterie focuses mainly on small business insurance.
Mackey, who’s been involved in starting businesses since 2011, is the chief operating officer for Coterie, the most profitable company in his repertoire, which he co-founded with Tim Metzner and CEO David McFarland. Coterie has experienced rapid growth in its five years of business, and has raised $100 million through its Series B of fundraising.
His most recent startup is 1000Zebras, a business-to-business (B2B) transaction service founded less than six months ago. The company is led by Mackey as CEO, and board members Ann Boger and Mariana Padilla.
According to Mackey, 1000Zebras’ main purpose is to connect small companies with service providers through its online marketplace, which shows a variety of listings for different business services – kind of like the popular website Fiverr, which deals with smaller jobs and tasks.
"When working with different startups and industries, I noticed a consistent need for various services (such as) accounting, legal, design, web development and HR," Mackey said. "(When outsourcing these jobs) you have to hire the right type of service provider at the right time, and it's very difficult to find them, interview them, negotiate with them, land them and ultimately, it’s even difficult to work with them."
It was this observation that led Mackey to develop and launch 1000Zebras in February as a two-sided marketplace, in an attempt to match the supply of with the demand for B2B services. The platform connects businesses looking for services with providers that have been vetted by 1000Zebras for legitimacy and consistency.
In order to be a verified merchant on the site, a business must be an American company generating between $5,000 and $100,000 per month in revenue, agree to be active in the site’s marketplace and have a strong customer-centric mission, according to its website.
The platform is still approaching its launch, but will offer services in a variety of categories including virtual assistants, bookkeeping, banking and marketing. Since its creation, 1000Zebras has been in the early stages of fine-tuning its platform and has been performing test-runs of the service with 15 companies. Mackey didn’t say exactly how much the company is projected to earn in its first year, but he expects it to be less than $1 million.
“That's what this year looks like for us, getting the system and the platform correct,” he said. “We believe that if we do that for next year, (the business) is going to go gangbusters."
Although the startup doesn’t have a dedicated physical space yet, it's been using coworking facilities like University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub to work in, according to Mackey.
