What distinguishes smart entrepreneurs from other business owners? One factor is stepping outside what you’re doing and imagining new opportunities. That’s the case with James Lenehan, who started his first company WinWin in 1987, when he was 26. WinWin is all about organising reward programmes such as weekends away, and the venture has done well.

On 2012, Lenehan started thinking outside the box. Like a lot of people, he could see that smartphones were going mass market and WiFi connections were speeding up. So what was the opportunity? Lenehan decided that it would be a good idea to use mobiles to connect brands with supermarket shoppers.

The idea was that shoppers would take a photo of their shopping bill and Lenehan’s Reep Rewards app would analyse the bill and reward the shopper if they’d bought particular products. The kickbacks were modest – maybe 5c on a €1.50 loaf of bread – but after launching in Q4 2013 there were 30,000 shoppers on the Reep platform six months later.

CashBack: James Lenehan

With this traction, in June 2014 Lenehan persuaded VC Company Frontline Ventures to invest €400,000. Frontline’s Shay Garvey helped Lenehan round up another €200,000 from investors in England and Germany. Lenehan, 43, then set about improving the technology and expanding the Reep user base with a marketing splurge on TV3

In Association with

Lenehan says that 80,000 people have registered with Reep, of whom 50,000 are active. Now he has switched the business model slightly, offering brands the opportunity to use Reep like a mobile voucher system. If a brand wants to push sales or launch a new product, they can use the nee Reep offering CashBack+ to offer cash rebates of 25c, 50c, or whatever on a product purchase.

Reep’s CashBack+ promotion service also allows for instant surveys of purchasers, which could be invaluable for new product launches. Central to the proposition is that the retailer has nothing to do with the promotion – what Lenehan calls disintermediation.