Wanderful Media, Interview with CEO Ben T. Smith, IV

Ben T. Smith_HeadshotWanderful Media, which operates Find&Save, just raised $14.5m in funding (read here). Ben T. Smith, IV, the CEO, helped us understand the secrets behind the Los Gatos, CA-based company.

FinSMEs: Hi Ben. First, can you tell us a little bit more about you? What’s your background?
Ben: I’m the CEO of Wanderful Media, a startup reimagining the digital circular with our product Find&Save. Additionally, I am also a venture partner at Accelerator Ventures, on the board of directors for Glu Mobile, and co-founder of MerchantCircle.com and Spoke.com.

Prior, I was president of Reply Media. I was the co-founder of MerchantCircle, which we sold to Reply Media for a significant return in 2011. I previously worked at Borland and AT Kearney. I’ve also served the White House as the senior advisor for strategy and planning to the Secretary of Transportation after 9-11.

FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Wanderful Media. What’s the problem do you want to fix?
Ben: Wanderful Media owns and operates Find&Save, a comprehensive collection of local sales available on FindnSave.com and on newspaper sites across the country in all 50 of the top 50 designated market areas (DMAs). Our key growth areas are on mobile and tablet with our apps: Find&Save for iPad, Find&Save for iPhone and now Find&Save for Android.

Wanderful Media represents a media industry initiative to transform the $4 billion business of traditional advertising circulars through digital innovation. Just as joint media ventures such as CareerBuilder and Cars.com strengthened the industry’s position through the use of new technology, Wanderful Media was created for an even broader set of investors to reinvent the circular advertising business for today’s shopper.

We are an independent company, backed by a diverse group of media companies: Advance Digital, A. H. Belo Corporation, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E. W. Scripps Company, Gannett Co., GateHouse Media, Inc., Graham Holdings Company, Hearst Corporation, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group and The McClatchy Company.

FinSMEs: Find&Save….How does it work?
Ben: On Find&Save, shoppers can browse through the latest sales and products in their local area. Find&Save makes it easy to discover great deals, map store locations, create/edit a shopping list and share finds with friends. Both tablet and mobile apps automatically alert shoppers when their favorite stores are having a sale. For the mobile apps, shoppers can use the app when they are in the mall to see the top sales happening at that moment, for example.

Find&Save across devices 1252x626

FinSMEs: What’s the business model?
BenWe have a performance-based advertising model, allowing retailers to both buy audience and get their content in front of an audience, as well as by performance where they pay us every time someone walks into their store.

FinSMEs: Some numbers? (revenue, employees, download, etc.)
Ben:
– Employees: 75
– Revenue: Between $5 million to $10 million.
– Downloads: We have nearly one million installs today and expect 10 million by the end of the year.
– Find&Save is available on 500 newspaper sites across the country, in all of the top 50 designated market areas (DMAs).
– Access to almost 100 million unique visitors per month through our network.
– Find&Save features millions of items from more than 18,000 brands, including Nike, Revlon, Gap, Apple, Sony, Ray Ban, Coach and Disney.
– From Macy’s to Target to Walgreens to Whole Foods and beyond, Find&Save includes more than 375 retailers at more than 150,000 locations.

FinSMEs: You just raised an additional $14.5m, which brought the total to over $50m. What can you tell me about it?
Ben: With today’s announcement, it brings the total funding to $50.5 million since our launch in September 2012. This new round of funding will help fuel future growth and innovation for Find&Save apps. It will help us increase distribution to go from one million to 10 million mobile app installs by the end of the year.

We have come a long way in the last year, and we’re just getting started.

FinSMEs:…future plans?
Ben: We are seeing more U.S. Internet users access the web through mobile devices than through PCs. We made a bet on mobile, and decided early on to focus on the growing mobile community.

At Wanderful Media, we are focused on customers. We want to grow a large and engaged local audience around a fun and addictive discovery shopping experience.

We have an app in beta right now that we are testing with independent retailers. Using the free iPhone app, small and medium-sized retailers can prominently display their best sales to catch the attention of local shoppers and drive them into their stores to make purchases. Independent retailers can quickly promote their stores and products for free to the Find&Save network so local shoppers can discover their great sales. We plan to distribute the new app broadly this summer.

FinSMEs

28/04/2014

Join the discussion