Times of San Diego sat down with Stephan Goss, CEO of Zeeto Media, in the company’s loft-style offices in downtown San Diego. The three-year-old company has grown to 55 employees through a unique pay-for-performance advertising model. Zeeto reaches more than 8 million people monthly with its GetItFree.us and Samples.com websites. It entices consumers with free offers, then connects them with consumer-products companies. Goss is a Swiss native who fell in love with San Diego and has become a leading supporter of the local startup community by helping to organize networking events.
Why did you start Zeeto Media?
We didn’t initially have a grand concept. Matt Marcin, our president, started the company in a different area of online marketing. I joined in May 2011. I was buying traffic; he had a lot of clients. We combined the two businesses and went from three people to 55. It was really his skills and mine.
How did you land national clients like Kellogg’s and Prilosec?
We work with a large group of clients. We have a really good sales team under Shayne Cardwell. We find free samples, push them out to our users — 8 million last month — and then cross-promote products by asking users to opt-in to learn more. The better the offering a brand has, the more our users are interested. The new Samples.com site will allow us to approach more large brands.
Tells us about Samples.com, your latest venture
We’re launching it pretty heavily this month. It’s exclusively samples focused. It’s obviously a much bigger brand so our hope is that we’re going to be able to attract some of the largest consumer products companies to actually give us a lot more free samples. It’s a huge growth strategy for us.
Zeeto has broken the 50-employee mark. What are the challenges of growth?
We have a really solid team now. Going forward, one of the challenges is keeping the culture the same way it has been while continuing to grow. Team building is definitely a big part of it. In the beginning, everyone worked together on everything. Now there are silos because of the size we’ve reached. But we organize happy hours every two weeks, dart tournaments and similar events so that we remain a team. This year we’re looking to double our revenue without doubling our employees again.
What advice do you have for first-time entrepreneurs in San Diego?
Just do it. I hear of a lot of people who plan so long that when they get around to doing something it’s too late. It’s all in the execution. People think you need a brilliant idea. You don’t; it’s all in the execution. There’s already a big startup community in San Diego. We’re very excited to see it grow.
Times of San Diego, a startup itself, regularly writes about startups in technology, biotech and other sectors of local business. If you are a startup in the San Diego area and want to tell your story, please contact news@timesofsandiego.com.
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