When Harry Jones, Tom Leiths, and Alex Buttle set out to found Motorway, a startup that connects car owners with dealers looking to buy and resell their vehicles, in 2017, the founding teams’ first startup. There was no rodeo. Nor was it his second.
Motorway was actually the founding team’s fifth startup, Motorway CPO Jones said on a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Found podcast. The co-founders all met in 2002 when they were young, Leaths and Jones worked at the same startup, and were able to grow up alongside each other, he added.
Despite his previous experience and success—two startups he founded were acquired—Motorway was the initial focus of his current strategy. The company started as a price comparison tool for consumers to see how dealers would value their car. While users were actively using the tool, the team realized they couldn’t go much further with this strategy, and turned to their current model, Jones said.
“That pivot was really important in how we developed the company,” Jones said. “The first thing, as a founder or an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with the idea of change.”
Jones also spoke about how the founding team has been able to deliver ideas for their company, from a travel accommodation curation to an office space search website to now a motorway.
“We try and provide value to the market as quickly as possible by just building really small, rough things, even if it’s just a one-page website,” Jones said. “When you pull the strings a little bit, and you find something that’s getting some traffic or some good conversions, we go a little bit further and develop it more. And that was the way we did it.” had taken along the motorway.
While many startups quickly expand into different geographies — sometimes to the point of their demise — Motorway is determined to build only in the UK.
“We still have a fairly low market share in terms of overall car transactions in the UK,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of headroom, the first point. The second thing is, I don’t think we’ve completed the full end-to-end experience for the motorway yet. For us, it’s really important that we Focus on this before you leave the UK’s borders.
Jones also spoke about how the Motorway team implemented lessons learned from past companies and what car he is currently driving.
Credit : techcrunch.com
