On-demand car care startup Get Spiffy has hired a chief financial officer with a history of exits.
Brad Schomber, former CFO of ChannelAdvisor, MaxPoint and SpoonFlower, started this week for the Research Triangle Park-based company. Could it mean Spiffy, which has raised more than $40 million in outside capital and has a $60 million annual run rate, is positioning itself for a public debut?
CEO Scot Wingo says maybe.
“I definitely think if we could keep growing and get investors to understand this digitalization of the auto industry, we think a possible exit is definitely an IPO,” Wingo said. While he said the firm is “way too small and there’s nothing on the horizon,” having Schomber helm the finances “makes us ready for if and when that ever happens.”
Wingo said it’s clear the IPO window is closed for now.
“It’s always good to be ready versus to have to react,” he said.
The public markets are dicey, but exit opportunities are out there. In December, AutoNation (NYSE: AN) acquired a Spiffy competitor, RepairSmith, for $190 million.
Wingo said expectations are high for Spiffy’s future. He draws a lot of comparison to the story at ChannelAdvisor, which he cofounded before taking it public. ChannelAdvisor was recently taken private by CommerceHub.
“One of the whole theories of Spiffy is we’ll see the auto industry go through the same changes the e-commerce industry did,” Wingo said.
Schomber’s expertise gives Spiffy one more tool to take advantage of the opportunities the changing market could bring. He has a history of executing Triangle exits – and not just on the New York Stock Exchange.
With ChannelAdvisor and MaxPoint, that was through initial public offerings. With his most recent role at Spoonflower, it was through a buyout by Shutterfly in 2021.
“I really like building good businesses and I find that when you build good businesses, those things sort of take care of themselves,” he said. “The nice thing is, having done this before … I feel very comfortable that wherever we go from here, I’ll be prepared to help execute on that.”
Schomber said the plan is to make 2023 “another really significant growth year for the company.”
“If we execute on that, which I think we will, I think good things will happen in the future,” he said.
Schomber said the Spiffy opportunity is “right in my sweet spot.”
“It’s high growth, you’ve got multibillion dollar markets – multiple multibillion dollar markets – that they’re going after,” he said. “And getting the chance to work with Scot again is fantastic.”
Jason Caplain, co-founder of Bull City Venture Partners, one of Spiffy’s investors, declined to talk about exit prospects, but he said Schomber’s hire “is definitely a signal or recognition that Spiffy is well on their way to being a very large, sustainable business.”
While running finances for MaxPoint in 2015, Schomber won a Triangle Business Journal CFO of the Year Award, telling TBJ that one thing that made him successful was his ability to “step outside of the pure accounting role and look at decisions from an operational perspective.”
Spiffy said this week that it had seen 90 percent year-over-year revenue growth. The company was cofounded by Wingo and Karl Murphy in 2014. Last year it celebrated its one millionth customer.
