IA: How and why did you start Shoeboxed?
Shoeboxed
TM: We started Shoeboxed in 2007 after my co-founder and I (both serial entrepreneurs) sold
Taylor Mingos, Shoeboxed
another company and were looking for ideas for a new business. Having both owned multiple businesses in the past, we knew first hand just how awful it was keeping up with receipts for tax deductions and the always dreaded audit. It’s out of this pain point that Shoeboxed was born.
Back in 2007, paper receipts were king and eReceipts were just starting to catch on. Shoeboxed started as a way for people to mail in their paper receipts for scanning and we also created one of the first digital receipt inboxes to handle eReceipts. Essentially, we created the “Netflix” of receipts.
Fast Forward 10 years and Shoeboxed is still at the forefront of receipt and document digitization.
IA: What are the lessons learned from the start up?
TM: You need to listen to your customers when building your product, but you also have to know that you can’t make each and every one of them completely happy. At the end of the day, the ability to figure out the deeper, core needs behind the customer wants and “feature requests” is ultimately what matters for the product.
For example: With Shoeboxed, we often had users ask for the ability to have employees submit receipts to an account without being able to see what their coworkers had submitted. We realized this request was coming from small businesses using Shoeboxed as their company-wide expense reporting tool, a use that was not the original intention of Shoeboxed. This led to the creation of our newest product, Fetch. Had we changed Shoeboxed, we would have alienated some of our user base and added many features that a lot of our users would find confusing and unnecessary. Instead, we created a separate product and kept both simple and easy to use.
IA: What the biggest challenge you are facing today?
TM: The biggest challenge we’re facing today is hiring. Tax season is always an extremely busy time of year for us and we are looking to greatly expand our sales and support teams for the 2018 “tax season rush” of people looking to have their receipts digitized.
IA: You’ve recently launched Fetch. Can you share what Fetch is and why you launched it?
TM: Shoeboxed has always been used as a digital receipt archive for small businesses. If you want to maximize your deductible business expenses and protect your business from an audit,
Fetch Logo
Shoeboxed is the solution for you.
For years we had customers ask us to build a product that functions as a full service expense reporting tool. Our customers were tired of the expensive and difficult-to-use expense reporting solutions on the market. Fetch was built to be the easiest, most useful and best value expense reporting solution available. Our initial customer feedback is showing us that we’ve succeeded.
IA: There are several expense management apps available, what makes Fetch stand out in the crowd?
TM: Fetch is catered specifically to small businesses. We don’t have all the bells and whistles of products like Concur, and that’s on purpose. By not focusing on having a hundred integrations and features, we’ve been able to deliver the cleanest user interface around and we’re very proud of that.
We also offer personalized support for each and every one of our customers free of charge. From day one, every one of our customers is given the white glove experience. Do you need help getting your 50 employees on board with Fetch? No problem! Just pick up the phone and we’ll have team members assist you with set up and on boarding.
IA: Lets talk data security – Data security is the common concern people seem to have with cloud technology. How do you address that at your company(ies)?
TM: The back-end system behind Shoeboxed and Fetch is very secure and uses Secured Sockets Layering (SSL), which is the standard in online encryption technology. All online data transferred through Shoeboxed and Fetch is encrypted so that it is nearly impossible for any third party to intercept communications. The SSL technology we use is the same level of encryption used on most major bank websites. Our privacy policies have also been reviewed by TRUSTe, a nonprofit ensuring that companies have fair and consumer-friendly privacy practices. Shoeboxed has also been recommended by several third party organizations, such as ID Theft Protect.
IA: What is on the horizon for Shoeboxed/Fetch?
TM: Lots of growth. Shoeboxed’s customer base and revenue continues to grow and we’ve already seen a lot traction with Fetch in the first few months after launch. The need for expense tracking isn’t going anywhere and we’re working for more ways to simplify it even further than we already have.