Motoinsight is transforming the automotive industry by delivering revolutionary online car buying experiences.
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?
My first real job was interning on the trading floor of a large investment bank. I quickly realized the role was less Gordon Gekko and more coffee boy. However, that job taught me one of the most important lessons in my career. The head trader explained to me that if he couldn’t trust me to get a coffee order right, how could he trust me with anything more complicated. Well, I became the best coffee boy that trading floor had ever seen, and was helping trade huge sums of money by the end of my internship. Pay attention and do the little things right. Don’t be afraid to do the dirty work. Opportunity will come.
What is it about your culture that drives success?
Ownership is one of the biggest values. We’re in the middle of having it painted on our wall. When we say ownership, it means really thinking about you as an entrepreneur no matter what your position is in the company.
When you think about yourself as an entrepreneur and you think about business the as your own, invariably people always go the extra mile whether it’s making sure a client gets what they need or pushing that extra effort to get a product out on time and out the door. That’s one of the biggest values that we instill in our company – for every single employee to think of the business as their own and to act as an owner.
What was the company’s journey like to get where it is?
As many entrepreneurial cliché stories go, we started in my mother’s basement – we have fond memories of those times. We then moved to a condo that we used as an office, and then we got our first real office space and then our second real office space and it continues to grow. We started in many ways from the bottom – literally in a basement.
The entrepreneurial journey is never a straight line. For those on the outside looking in, it looks like it goes from one to two to three to four to five to ten, but it’s always a roller- coaster of zigs and zags. You pivot and reposition. I can best analogize it as a bit of an emotional roller coaster. You always have to have the ability to keep an internal sense of peace. We do that by surrounding ourselves with like-minded team members. I have several co-founders, which help commiserate and celebrate when good things and bad things happen. We’re as excited today as we’ve ever been about our industry, the prospects for our company and the growth path that we’re on. We are at an inflection point.
What’s next for Motoinsight?
Historically, the auto industry and car-buying journey is a very “offline” experience. Our mission to make car-buying easier, faster and more transparent continues. And we’re just getting started!
Motoinsight
Motoinsight partners with automakers and dealerships to redefine automotive retail. Motoinsight’s data and analytics solutions are used by nearly every automaker, over 1,000 dealership franchises, the largest banks, automotive software providers and insurance companies.