News from Scot Wingo! He is back in the ecommerce arena as CEO of a new AI-native startup, ReFiBuy. The name is a reference to the Research, Find and Buy cycles that consumers go through. ReFiBuy are building agents which they say will help retailers and brands solve some of their hardest problems.
Many in the industry will remember Scot Wingo, from his founding of AuctionRover (sold to Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions) and then ChannelAdvisor (now part of Rithum). In recent years, in a step away from retail ecommerce, Scot focused on Spiffy, an automotive care app that enables customers to book various vehicle services, but he is now firmly back in the ecommerce world.
Founded by Scot and three highly experienced ecommerce industry veterans, ReFiBuy are announcing their official launch today, along with the completion of a $1.7 million oversubscribed pre-seed funding round.
The Raleigh-based company is dedicated to creating advanced APIs and SaaS products designed to solve ecommerce’s most complex challenges using cutting-edge generative AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs), reasoning models, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and agentic systems.
At my previous ecommerce company, ChannelAdvisor, we scaled to over $130 million ARR and facilitated $10 billion annually in transactions. Despite our growth, technology limitations made some critical challenges impossible to solve. The AI advancements that have emerged since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 offer unprecedented opportunities to tackle these challenges head-on, significantly enhancing consumer experiences and revitalizing ecommerce growth!
– Scot Wingo, CEO and co-founder, ReFiBuy
ReFiBuy’s founding team includes:
- Scot Wingo, CEO: Serial entrepreneur with 27 years of ecommerce experience at AuctionRover, GoTo, Overture, and ChannelAdvisor.
- Cameron Bowe, CTO: Veteran technologist with 18 years of ecommerce experience at ChannelAdvisor and Rithum.
- Derek Conlin, COO: Ecommerce expert with 18 years of experience at ChannelAdvisor, Walmart, and Rithum, specializing in global sales, partnerships, and corporate development.
- James Frawley, CAIO: Expert in ecommerce analytics and intelligence, bringing 11 years of experience from ChannelAdvisor and MikMak.
The $1.7 million pre-seed round was led by G20 Ventures, reaffirming a successful partnership dating back to their early investment in ChannelAdvisor in 2004.
We’re thrilled to reunite with Scot and back ReFiBuy in pioneering vertical AI solutions for ecommerce.
– Bob Hower, Partner, G20 Ventures
Additional institutional investors participating in the round include Knoll Ventures and Commerce Ventures. Individual angel investors also backing ReFiBuy feature prominent industry figures such as James Avery (CEO of Kevel), Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, Jason Goldberg (ecommerce influencer), Dan Rua (CEO of Admiral), Robbie Allen, Jonathan Marcus, Will Holt, Derek Wall, and Ben Brooks.
ReFiBuy will be launching some demo capabilities in a closed invite only early experience capabilities via our waitlist available on the homepage of refibuy.ai. Ecommerce brands, retailers, and partners interested in learning more under NDA can contact ReFiBuy directly.
