How Wander Went Asset-Light and 100x'ed its Locations: A Deeper Dive with John Andrew Entwistle

Not Boring Radio

Wander raised $50+ million in a Series B led QED and Fifth Wall. The fun part is, Wander did it by throwing out a lot of what we discussed in the first Wander Deep Dive — which, at the time, I said was the absolute right way to do things — and growing insanely fast while maintaining its high quality bar. I started doing these Deeper Dives, following up on companies I’d written Deep Dives on in the past to understand what I got right, what I got wrong, and what we could learn from both, in March, with a Deeper Dive on Primer. I gotta admit, I was a little smug: Primer was doing great, in large part because it had gone more vertically integrated, which is exactly my thesis on how these things should be built. “And if you want to fix K-12 education,” I wrote, “you need to build schools.”Welp… over the past two years, Wander shut down the REIT I praised, went asset-light, grew from 13 to more than 1,000 locations, grew GMV 6x over the past 18 months, and is onboarding over $1 billion worth of real estate monthly. And while growing, its NPS has actually ticked up to 85. Being wrong and learning is why I do the Deeper Dives! If companies could be built as cleanly as I can write an essay, I’d be a billionaire. You’ve got to play the game; the lessons emerge from the messiness, and from following the best companies as they evolve. So today, I'm talking to Wander CEO John Andrew Entwistle about what we both got wrong and how Wander has gotten the important things right. You can read the full Deeper Dive at Not Boring.