Entrepreneur Meetup: Cory Hewett of Gimme Vending Inc.

Cory is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gimme. He is a technology disruptor to industries dramatically underserved by their legacy technology suppliers. As a graduate from Babson and Georgia Tech, he was extremely motivated to build and grow something. Little did he know he would find his passion in vending machine software and management.

On August 22nd, he joined David Cummings and fellow SaaS professionals to share his unique story to success. A few key takeaways: Gimme’s sights are always set on the path to victory and beyond; don’t be afraid of the hardware and software challenges; hire people who are just as passionate and driven as you.

About Gimme

The Gimme system was designed to service vending machines with the operator in mind. The operator can know exactly where their machines are, how many, and if they’ve been visited that day, all on an easy-to-read map view.

Fun fact: Cory started his entrepreneurial journey by running a gum-ball vending machine service.

Getting to the Real Problem

When Evan Jarecki and Cory were first starting out they went to a vending customer during their customer discovery stage and asked, “What are your biggest pain points?”

“Not being able to track my machines. If you could do that, I would write a check on the spot.”

Cory and Evan went back to work, presented a model, and left with a check.

Lessons Learned

“Evan and I thought we were going to build the coolest credit card/Apple pay/accepting payment box ever. It’s what we thought would be attractive to the industry!”

What they learned from customer discovery is that consumers love the idea of a tap-to-pay screen, but customers who would ultimately write a check had no interest in paying for that feature. The real pain points — catching theft, understanding product placement, tracking, purchasing and restocking — were the problems Gimme needed to solve.

Photos by Luke Beard