Matt Rutledge (born 1972) is an American Internet entrepreneur, best known as the founder and former CEO of the
daily deal site
Woot
Woot (originally W00t) is an American Internet retailer based in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. Founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge, it debuted on July 12, 2004. Woot's main website generally offers only one discounte ...
. Woot was acquired by Amazon in 2010, and Rutledge resigned his position at Amazon in 2012. Rutledge launched a new daily-deal site, Meh, in 2014.
Early life
Rutledge grew up in
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, mapsize = 220px
, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
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and
Carrollton,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
. He was an undistinguished high school student.
He then moved to the
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
,
Missouri
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
area to live with his mother, but returned to Texas to avoid paying some $8,000 in traffic tickets.
Origins and Founding of Woot
While working at a
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
-area computer retailer called Resource Concepts, Rutledge began attending the monthly First Saturday swap meets, selling refurbished PC parts from a truck in the wee hours of the morning. In 1994, Rutledge launched his first company, Synapse Micro, wholesaling tech products to primarily mom-and-pop computer shops.
In 2004, Rutledge launched Woot as an outgrowth of Synapse Micro, offering a single product a day at steeply discounted prices. "I wanted it to be a blog and a store at the same time," Rutledge told
Inc. Magazine.
To that end, he encouraged the site's copywriters to be entertainingly frank about the shortcomings of the often obsolete products sold on the site. "We feel that if we don't do a good job describing what's wrong with a product, people will assume we just don't know. That's where most retailers fail. To them, every product is perfect."
After four years of rapid growth, in 2008 Woot was named the #1 Fastest Growing Private Retail Company in America
and the #1 Fastest Growing Private Company in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area by ''Inc.''.
Acquisition by Amazon
In June 2010,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
acquired Woot for a reported $110 million. Rutledge remained as CEO. The company's headquarters remained in Carrollton, although the creative and web development team, previously based in St. Louis, moved to the Amazon campus in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
.
Amazon's ownership of Woot was characterized by increasing complexity of the company's simple business model, moving away from the deal-of-the-day approach to a broader collection of flash sales. Critics claimed that the post-acquisition Woot lost much of its appeal. Woot "was just too eccentric to slot smoothly into a big company that thrives on being orderly. So all those crazy edges got hacked off until it did fit," wrote
CNET blogger Amanda Kooser in 2013. "This approach is all Amazon knows. It's just too bad it had to stomp out a fun little corner of geek commerce and camaraderie in the process."
Rutledge largely agreed with these criticisms and took some of the responsibility for them, saying he was "unable to represent our needs in a succinct, convincing manner" within Amazon. "The goal-based tactical needs of Amazon were unable to appreciate a relatively small artful business model with different growth drivers."
Founding of Mediocre Laboratories and meh.com
Rutledge left Woot in 2012 citing his greater interest in creating and growing new companies than in managing an Amazon subsidiary.
His first public project after leaving Woot was A Mediocre Corporation, so named, in Rutledge's words, "to lower expectations with the brand". Rutledge paid $100,000 for the meh.com domain in June 2014.
A Mediocre Corporation launched Meh.com in July 2014,
preceded by a
Kickstarter campaign describing Meh as a revival of "The Classic Daily Deal Site". "The underlying premise is that we're building a store that you don't need to buy anything from to have fun," Rutledge told ''
Business Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German pub ...
''.
References
External links
Mediocre Laboratoriesmeh.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rutledge, Matt
1972 births
American technology company founders
American businesspeople in retailing
Amazon (company) people
Living people
People from San Antonio