Kieran O’Brien and Cayden Phipps
Title: Co-founders
Company: Shopgenie
Age: Both 25
Car enthusiasts Kieran O’Brien and Cayden Phipps are changing how automotive repair shops conduct business through Shopgenie, an all-in-one customer experience platform.
O’Brien and Phipps met in 2019 and built an automotive marketing agency that served hundreds of automotive shops. Through that experience, they noticed automotive shop owners were paying several different software vendors for many of the same tasks, O’Brien said.
They also saw an emerging trend of online booking, which hadn’t been present in the auto repair industry, Phipps said.
That led to the cofounders’ idea for Shopgenie, which launched in 2023 and includes an online booking system, marketing tools and an AI-based response tool.
Shopgenie is now used in more than 1,000 repair shops and the company has achieved $5 million in annual recurring revenue in just 18 months with only angel and seed funding. The company has 50 employees, some of whom are based in the Valley, Phipps said.
“Our plan is to continue growing and doubling down on the things we've been doing,” O’Brien said. “We currently serve over 1,000 independent auto repair shop owners in America — or 0.3% of the market — so needless to say, there's lots of work to be done.”
Read about the rest of this year's honorees here.
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