On the heels of raising $80 million in a Series C funding round, Wes Schroll, the founder and CEO of Madison-based app Fetch Rewards, talked with Wisconsin Inno in a virtual Bytes with the Beat this week about the company's beginnings, its rapid growth, why he kept the company in Wisconsin, navigating the pandemic, what's next for the company, and ... Tom Brady (watch until the end).
The latest investment round brought the company's total amount raised since its founding in 2013 to over $120 million. Fetch Rewards operates a smartphone app where shoppers can scan their grocery receipts to upload codes and save on future items at checkout.
Schroll left the University of Wisconsin-Madison after his sophomore year to start the company in 2013.
"I was super fortunate that I was encouraged to pursue this," Schroll said. "That wasn't the hard part of making the decision. The harder part was to step away from being a 19-year-old kid, experiencing college and being fortunate to be in that position, and stepping away from that to work 90-, 100- and 120-hour work weeks just to try to get something off the ground. That was the harder part of it."
The company, which now has more than 350 employees, has processed more than 700 million receipts and delivered nearly $100 million in savings to its users. It also boasts 16 million downloads of its app.
In 2020, Fetch Rewards ranked No. 116 overall on the 2020 Inc. 5000, the premier list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. The company reported a growth rate of 3,160% between 2016 and 2019 and its ranking was the highest for any company from Wisconsin.
Schroll attributed the company's success to his team.
"I remember in that first office going up to the white board and writing 'sacrifice' and 'trust' and 'team' and what we were acknowledging at that point was 'we're all making sacrifices, we're all working long hours, we're doing something, but we trust in the process, we trust in what we're collectively working for and being something that's worth while' and with those two things, the only outcome you can have is an amazing team that rallies around each other," he said.
Earlier this month, Fetch Rewards announced it had hired Nupur Sadiwalaa to be the company's new chief financial officer. Sadiwalaa previously served as CFO at Singapore-based Reebonz, a luxury e-commerce company.
Schroll said Sadiwalaa will help evaluate the company's opportunities.
"We didn't hire Nupur with any one specific focus, it was more to evaluate tons of them," he said. "I think startups in general often die more of indigestion than of starvation. There's just too many things that you can do, versus than running out of things to do. We're very much in that position, where we're fortunate to have tons of opportunities coming to us, and we need a little bit more rigor in how we approach which ones we go after."
