Bevz’s Vego is Modernizing Your Local Convenience Store

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Vego, the CEO & Co-Founder of Bevz, a SaaS platform for liquor and convenience stores.

Jason has over a decade of experience in marketing, operations, and culture building. He has worked at multiple startups and is a second-time founder. He also spent many years working in big tech, where he was formerly the Head of Global Employee Communications & Engagement at Citrix.

Jason got his BA from UC Santa Barbara with a triple-major in Communication, Business Writing, and Applied Psychology, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship.

Personally, Jason lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife and 2 dogs. When he’s not working, you can find him trying new foods and drinks throughout LA.

Thank you so much for joining us!

What motivated you to launch your startup?

My co-founder Victor is the original conceptualizer and founder of Bevz. He has owned and operated convenience stores for 37 years, and has helped more than 100 convenience store owners improve their operational processes.

I’ve known Victor for over 20 years. He was my neighbor, family friend, and basketball coach. We have a history of winning together in sports, which quickly shifted to business and entrepreneurship. Once I studied the market opportunity and got to know several convenience store owners, I was convinced that we could transform the snack and drink industry through a completely untapped, yet huge market — convenience stores. So, I quit my job at Citrix and teamed up with Vic to build Bevz.

What is it that excites you about what you’re building?

I love how Bevz uses advanced, modern technology to help local, small businesses survive and grow. With the right customization and deep customer knowledge, we’re able to significantly help these convenience stores by giving them resources and technology that they would never be able to get on their own. By helping thousands of these stores and capturing robust data, we can transform the way items are bought and sold across the world.

What are your future plans for your startup?

We have a ton of big plans! In the next five years, we’re planning to:

• Acquire tens of thousands of convenience stores in multiple countries.
• Use data and technology integrations to allow convenience stores to automate most of their process — from inventory ordering and online sales, to physical and cybersecurity, to payroll, insurance, and financing.
• Bring interesting, unique, and multicultural items to convenience stores — helping these stores increase sales while better meeting the needs of local consumers.

If you had to share, “words of wisdom,” with a Founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?

De-risk your startup and your own founder journey, especially given the current market. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Pick the right founding team — know your strengths and weaknesses, and bring in team members to fill the gaps (bonus points if you have one founder that deeply knows the industry/customer).
• Interview 75+ industry players before you launch — this can be customers, potential partners, industry professionals, etc. who can give you insights about the problems and areas of opportunity (and it costs no money to do this).
• Launch an MVP and don’t overspend — get a working product in the market, based on the insights you got from your interviews, and see what customers think when they actually use it.
• Keep a full-time job while doing the above 3 things — if you can afford to be unemployed the entire time, go for it. Assuming you don’t have that luxury, I recommend building your team, doing the interviews, and launching your MVP on nights and weekends, and once you are confident that you can raise money and/or bring in revenue to improve the product and acquire more customers, then quit your job.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

I’m most active on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jvego/) and starting to use Twitter more often (@JasonVego).

This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!