ZINOpreneur of the Week: Geff Woodward

One of our ZINO Society featured ZINOpreneurs this week is Geff Woodward, Founder and CEO of Wine Valet, Inc. Geff will be one of the 5 minute presenters at the upcoming ZINO Zillionaire Investment Forum (ZZIF) on September 15th at Bell Harbor Conference Center. We asked him to share the answers to a few questions about his company.

What is your one-sentence elevator pitch? . . . Wine Valet provides our clientele with a highly personalized concierge service, backed by a sophisticated application, so that they can easily and thoroughly understand and enjoy their wine collection.

How did you come up with the idea for your company? . . . I came up with the business idea because I had a 'wine buying' problem! Over a very few years, I had amassed a modest 700 bottle collection and suddenly realized that I had no idea regarding i) what kind of wines made up my collection, ii) when to consume each bottle, iii) what foods to pair with each wine, iv) the value of my collection at any given time, and v) insurance for my collection at fair market value, etc.


The word that best describes your company culture is . . . Integrity

In one sentence, how are you different from your competition? . . . We neither sell wine nor store wine, we have a completely independent, third party perspective that allows us to provide unbiased, comprehensive and actionable information so that our customers may make informed and intelligent decisions regarding their wine collection (aka liquid asset portfolio)

What is the biggest challenge you face? . . . Our biggest challenge is to truly understand the lifestyles of our target market (i.e., none of us has $5-30M+ in liquid assets...)

How much money have you raised to date? . . . We have raised just under $30K from "Friends and Family" investors in a short amount of time with a 70% success pitch rate.

If someone gave your company $3 million tomorrow, how would you use the money? . . . Build the application, enroll and serve our customers, and successfully grow the company twice as fast as we had originally planned.

What is the oddest or most unusual thing about your company? . . . The most unusual thing about our company is that our financial advisor is the only one associated with the company that doesn't drink wine (he is LDS), but he loves our business model.


What is one thing missing from your business? . . . Note - still working on a good response for this one....


Why will your company be successful? . . . We have identified our target market, we are focused on our 'core competency', we have assembled an exceptional team, and finally we have a simple, yet targeted, execution strategy.