Kreg Peeler, SpinGo
How a Website Metric Sparked a SaaS Go-to-Market Shift
Kreg Peeler's first entrepreneurial venture was at age 12 - selling avocados at a busy California intersection with a cardboard sign. His SaaS go-to-market journey started in a similarly scrappy way, with a DVD containing 6,000 menus that he distributed through university bookstores. That DVD led to a website called Spin Local, which had a local events section. Kreg's wife Amanda manually curated event listings - digging up content from venue websites, correcting typos, and publishing comprehensive calendars. When they checked their analytics, 80% of all website traffic was going to that events section. That one metric changed everything. When newspaper companies tried to acquire Spin Local, Kreg countered with a licensing deal instead. He broke off the events section as a separate product called SpinGo and signed up media companies as clients who paid monthly fees for event content they could embed in their entertainment sections. SpinGo's SaaS go-to-market strategy evolved through three phases. Phase one was licensing event content to media companies and app developers. Phase two was promotions - letting event makers pay for premium placement, featured listings, and self-serve Facebook and Google ad campaigns. Phase three was Event Master, a full SaaS platform that unifies ticketing, marketing, volunteer management, and event apps into one solution. By 2016, SpinGo had grown to 200,000 registered event makers, powered 5,500 entertainment apps reaching 200 million monthly viewers, and raised over $7 million in funding. The Event Master SaaS product, launched in February, signed 254 events in its first few months and was projected to generate 80% of the company's revenue. Kreg's trade show strategy was particularly effective. He brought professional stage lighting, 80-inch TVs, and event production expertise to newspaper industry conferences where competitors showed up with pop-up banners. The visual contrast won attention, and his message - "own local, don't try to be national" - positioned SpinGo as an ally rather than a competitor.
