Product design & development seem to get all of the credit in today's startup world. Buzzwords around UX, flat design, or growth hacking dominate most of the blog headlines, but what's commonly left out are the business decisions that provided market discovery, distribution, and scale to a growing startup. We recently caught up with Tim Kelly (CEO) & Prag Shah (COO) of Charleston startup, Zubie and heard one of the incredible growth stories that flew just under the radar.
Zubie makes your car into a true computer: it "connects your car to the internet to deliver 24/7 location tracking, maintenance diagnostics, and driving insights to your smartphone". While their product will always steal headlines, what stuck out during our time at Startup Grind Charleston was how they used partnerships to sell and distribute their product across the world.
Zubie On a Mission
Zubie began their mission to perfect the connected car in 2012. While the Internet of Things (iOT) is fairly common today, connecting everyday objects to the internet was not a mainstream concept at that time. After building a sophisticated technical product, they found everyday consumers weren't quite ready to embrace the idea of connecting their car to the internet en masse. Though the benefits of Zubie are strong, market awareness is low.
The good news: this was not Tim or Prag's first rodeo. Using their decades of experience working for global telecommunications and subscription service companies, they went back to the drawing board. Instead of dropping loads of money on marketing and forcing the idea on to consumers, they asked themselves: "instead of offering this solely to consumers, what business enterprises can use this technology to improve their data, sales, and infrastructure?". They quickly identified a few verticals: auto dealers, insurance, and mobile telco industries could leverage their technology and analytics. What they found transformed their company from a consumer focused provider to an enterprise data & analytics services provider.
Zubie began speaking with insurance companies, fleet driven businesses, automotive dealers, maintenance providers, landscaping companies - basically, any company that incurs costs from automotive use.They were onto something valuable, finding multiple applications for their products in a B2B model.
Insurance companies need real driving behavior data on drivers.
Automotive dealers need to understand and communicate with their clients to coordinate car care.
Maintenance providers can track their client's needs and even prevent car maintenance disasters.
These business challenges opened up partnership discussions both in US, and Europe and Brazil which helped Zubie grow their business into one of the fastest growing startups in the region. Now Zubie’s B2B partnerships include marquee customers such as Progressive, AutoNation, Telefonica, and many others.
If you are building a consumer focused product, take a lesson from the experienced team at Zubie and ask yourself the question: "Can this product bring value to other businesses as well as consumers?". With a little creativity and research, you may find explosive growth like the Zubie team.