The Future Is Now: Rokas Medonis of carVertical On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview with Fotis Georgiadis
I truly believe that in this era, we have too much optimism. Unfortunately, too much optimism brings false expectations for reality, and this brings despair for the people. When a negative outcome comes from the stuff you expect to be good, the result won’t be good.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs I had the pleasure of interviewing Rokas Medonis.
Rokas Medonis is the CEO of carVertical, a blockchain car history registry that has launched in 25 markets and is growing. Working as a head of marketing and business development, a specialist in brand development and protection during his career, Medonis became a digital marketing specialist with a background in conversion optimization, PPC, A/B, and multivariate testing, bringing measurable ROI and data-driven decisions, which, additionally, gained him valuable project management and project leading skills. He’s also a board member in the privately held venture capital fund Startup Highway.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
After high school, I started my career path as a photojournalist. In 2009 my colleague and I had created and launched a photo news agency in the Baltics. We took our market share quite fast. This was a turning point when I decided to stop being a newsboy (I was a very decent photographer) and shift to IT projects. Job after job, and I became CMO at the big dating site. In 2015 I decided to go into max risks and try to start-up businesses by myself.
Many failures later, I’ve ended as CEO at carVertical, an IT data company that creates products from historical car data. We are scaling quite fast. At the moment, 70 people are working at the company. We are covering 25 markets and expecting 16mil EUR revenue in 2021.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I am telling as a joke that my superpower is going into turmoils and using fundamental human traits to start everything from scratch.
In high school, my dream was to become a photo news photographer. That was the only path I saw for my life. Personally, it’s a fantastic story of how I’ve shifted from the locked and clear career path and entered the IT business world.
Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
Fundamentally people are cheaters. They were cheating in all epochs in all possible fields.
When a car loses the warranty that the manufacturer provided, it starts losing data on itself. As a result, dark spots of its history begin to appear. And car resellers use those dark sports to leverage the price to their side by doing some dirty work — clocking odometers, hiding accidents, or doing other dirty jobs. In other words, used car sellers and resellers are often cheating.
CarVertical technology gathers all possible data on used cars and tries to cover all those dark spots. Also, we are implementing machine learning on our data to analyze it. Our goal is to beat the cheating seller out, protect used vehicle buyers from fraud, and provide them with a bargaining chip.
How do you think this might change the world?
We genuinely believe that our products will lower the rate of cheating in the second-hand car market in the long term. It would be perfect to become a tool for cheating prevention. When the car seller knows that the buyer will check the car via carVertical — he will think twice before cheating.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Maybe history will prove differently, but I do not see any Black Mirrorish stuff in our technology.
We are not creating data. We are gathering it and analyzing it.
Last decade all the business verticals were using hot keyword big data. But no one can understand big data without an interpreter. We are the interpreter of data for an end-user.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
We did not invent such a type of product. There were few older products in the European market. But the problem is that those companies looked at their products as cash cows: no innovation, no proper technology used, no brand, no marketing.
I encountered such a type of product for the first time in 2012. And I was outraged why those guys did not make a good IT data company on that topic. Just a low-quality pdf printout with generic data on cars.
After five years, I have gathered founders and started re-inventing this product and building a proper data company.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
In general, we have reached all the limits in digital marketing for our product. We understood that none of our competitors did market formation. They did not work on the need for such a type of product. As a result, users do not know a product that can help take bargaining leverage to their hands.
In all our main markets, we have taken a step from digital marketing and entered the costly mixed media such as TV and radio. And it works for us. We see how the market size is getting bigger and bigger. So the only thing we need is time.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
We are building a non-conformist brand for a data product. Data is boring in general. It’s tough to build a brand on boring stuff.
I think our most vital part is that we do not have a single marketing approach. No pants that fit all sizes. We take different methods for different target groups and even genders. This era is offering an excellent opportunity to reach your clients with unique messages on various channels.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I am grateful for three other carVertical co founders. Without first, we would not have the technology. Without a second, we wouldn’t know how to get data. Without constant pushing, we would be growing slower.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
By proving that, market rules that were considered as default — can be changed.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
When starting a business, always put some of your money into it. Your mindset will change how you spend it.
When the company starts scaling, let yourself lose full control of product and business and let people you hire take responsibility. It’s tough, I know.
As a person — you never will be an “end product”. I always thought that after thirty, I would never change as a person.
I always thought that a stronger specialist is that one who has put plenty of time into one and single topic. Nope. Stronger is that one who knows how to react and adapt by using fundamental human traits of his.
If you cannot think of a new and unique product, you are not for the business. Nope. The era of unique social networks and marketplaces ended in the last decade. Now is the age to take the product idea from the dinosaur business and reinvent it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I truly believe that in this era, we have too much optimism. Unfortunately, too much optimism brings false expectations for reality, and this brings despair for the people. When a negative outcome comes from the stuff you expect to be good, the result won’t be good.
I am a nihilist to the core. I think that nihilism provides you a rational and objective grip on reality.
I want to spread nihilism among business people :))
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Regret nothing”. This is my motto from school days, and it always helps me not to stick to the failures and move fast to new endeavors.
Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
When a VC approaches me, my one-liner is, “We do not need external investment since we move forward from our profits”.
It always grabs their attention. I know this because I was working at VC 😛
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rokasmedonis/
A few years ago, I changed my FB profile from public to personal. It is because I do not have enough narcissism anymore to put effort and time into public posts.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: Rokas Medonis of carVertical On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
