Extend - Entrepreneur of the Year
Company: Extend, San Francisco, CA
Entry Submitted By: ASTRSK PR
Company Description: Extend is an API-first company that allows any merchant to easily offer extended warranties and protection plans while providing the merchant's end customers with a vastly improved and modern support experience that eliminates many of the issues customers face today with legacy providers.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Entrepreneur of the Year - Consumer Services
Nomination Title: Woodrow Levin, CEO and Founder
Woodrow “Woody” H. Levin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Extend, Inc. (“Extend”), the leading API-first solution for merchants to offer extended warranties and protection plans. Woody is a seasoned entrepreneur of 20 years who has built and operated several successful technology and finance companies. Woodrow also currently serves as a member of the board of directors of DraftKings (NASDAQ - DKNG).
Extend is an API-first company that allows any merchant to offer extended warranties and protection plans on the products that they sell. Woody founded Extend in February of 2019 and has raised $57M to date from Meritech Capital, PayPal, and Great Point Ventures. Extend has 110 employees, and works with over 175 merchant partners who sell consumer electronics, auto parts, sports and fitness equipment, furniture, jewelry and watches, and more.
Extend had quickly become the leader in the modern extended warranty and protection plan industry, and powers extended warranty programs for lighthouse merchants including Peloton, iRobot, Advance Auto Parts, Harman / JBL, Logitech, and others. Their online claims bot, Kaley, is delighting customers with her lightning fast interactions and adjudicating 98% of claims in under sixty seconds, allowing for a seamless claim process rarely seen in the space today. Extend has delivered a digitally native, easy to understand, and transparent protection plan program to hundreds of thousands of consumers.
With their most recent funding round, Woody spearheaded Extend’s efforts to expand their partnerships with leading retailers across a variety of industries, including consumer electronics, auto parts, jewelry, medical devices, and most recently furniture, through their partnership with Guardsman. Extend’s platform touches over $27B in warrantable gross merchandise through their merchant partner integrations. They currently offer pre-built integrations into Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Big Commerce, Hybris, and IBM Websphere eCommerce platforms. They also have robust APIs and offer SDK that streamlines integration into custom websites.
Woody recognized that the extended warranty and protection plan industry had long been dominated by legacy providers who had not given customers a great customer experience. Many times their programs are full of “gotchas” including the need to provide their receipt to get service, and the requirement that you actually have to call someone on the phone to file a claim. Because Extend is a fully licensed service contract administrator, they are able to fully control the customer experience from the start of their claim to the end. Woody has created a modern experience that consumers expect - especially in a world where eCommerce usage is exploding.
Of note, and a source of price for Woody, is the fact that Extend has grown from 0-110 employees in the 22 months they’ve been in service, with only 3 employees turning over during that time.
-Woody currently serves as a member of the board of directors of DraftKings (NASDAQ - DKNG)
-Grew his company from 0-110 employees in 21 months
-Spearheaded Extend’s fundraising efforts, raising $57M to date
-Secured commercial deals with Peloton, iRobot, Advance Auto Parts, L’ange, Harman / JBL, Logitech and more
-Nominated by Business Insider as one of the top Enterprise Startups which will explode in 2021
-Led licensing efforts to allow Extend to become a fully licensed service contract administrator