Meet Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries, CEO and co-founder of Fixico

My name is Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries and I am the CEO and co-founder of Fixico. 

Alongside my business partner Mark van Laar, we created Fixico back in 2014 to revolutionise the car repair industry. 

Having received a master’s in business administration from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, I’ve always had a passion for entrepreneurship. I was really interested in building industry-transforming companies — ones with the potential for making a significant difference. I wanted to find real problems and build lasting solutions, something Mark was also deeply passionate about. When I had the idea for Fixico, we both decided that this was the moment to really dedicate ourselves to transforming the long outdated car repair industry. 

There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?

During my final year of studying, I borrowed my mother’s car and accidentally scratched it. It wasn’t until I tried to find a repair shop that I realised the process of getting a car repaired is incredibly inconvenient, time-consuming and often expensive. 

I used Google to try and find a quick solution but all I found was a list of random repair shops and no definitive answers to the questions I had and no transparency whatsoever on what I needed. That’s where the idea for Fixico was born. 

We wanted to revolutionise the car repair process to make it as simple as booking a hotel room, for example - you get insight into exactly what you need, how much it’ll cost and exactly where you can get it.

What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?

Once we had the business idea - myself and my co-founder Mark began immersing ourselves in the industry and talking to experts which helped us further materialise our business plan. The more time we spent developing our vision, the more excited we became as we saw this huge market which is outdated, fragmented and dominated by traditional players who had been doing things in the same way for decades. 

This fragmented industry was entrenched in an enormous lack of data and transparency — what it needed to make everything efficient. On top of this, the entire process was offline and manual, a true outlier in our modern world.

Our goal is to completely transform the way cars are being serviced - by leveraging data and technology we are able to bring all stakeholders together in a more innovative and effective way. Based on this idea, we are building a tech company that will genuinely transform the automotive repair industry. 

How did you fund the business in the early stages?

We knew from the beginning that we wanted to transform the industry. So we needed to build a company which would become an industry leader. While we knew this would require considerable resources, it’s always a challenge to find them while still developing a product-market fit. We wanted to find angel investors to kick off, but also to surround ourselves with smart people who could help guide us and push us to think beyond a simple business idea within a certain region. 

In the early stage, everything was scarce. Mark and I had to do everything ourselves, which ultimately allowed us to 1) make sure we found all the right angles in terms of operations, sales, marketing, etc ourselves before we scaled and 2) push ourselves to be as creative as possible to compensate for our lack of resources.

With our initial investment, we managed to onboard 50 repair shops in and around Amsterdam. From these 50, we could prove our product-market fit, which attracted more funding and specialised people, and we quickly grew into a real business.

With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?

As already mentioned, the opportunity that we saw was to transform and modernise an entire industry held back by traditional and manual processes. By utilising both technology and data to make the process smarter, more efficient and more transparent, we were able to really shape the industry. 

A perfect example of this shift was how practically no repair shops at the beginning of our journey believed it was possible to assess a vehicle’s damage and provide a quote just using pictures. We were the first adopters of using photos for the damage intake, and had to put in an incredible amount of work to prove to people that it did work. Something we have now proven many thousands of times over.

Today, we are leveraging AI in our photo quoting process as well as a huge selection of other technologies throughout the whole repair process. As the first to digitalise the repair journey and make smarter allocation based on data, we continue to define ourselves as a frontrunner in the industry. 

How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?

It’s one thing to have a solid business idea, but that doesn’t mean much if you can’t execute — and for this, you need the right people. In order to find the right people with the same values, motivation and spirit, you need to be very clear what kind of company you want to be, where you want to go and what is needed for people to get there.

My top tip for getting this right is to embed your culture into all of your processes. It starts with talent acquisition looking for people with specific experience and skill sets, but then you need to see if that person fits the cultural values you have established. Once they’re on the team, you still need to continuously bring these values into performance reviews and decision making. It’s nice to have cool decorations on the walls that remind you of these values, but the culture ultimately comes from bringing it into important discussions right from the start.

What does your business offer its target audience?

Simply: Car repair digitised, made smart with insights from data all contributing to easier operations for our customers.

We use technology to centralise repairs into a single platform, offering both business and repair partners an end-to-end digital repair journey, smart matchmaking and real-time insights. This has culminated into something no one else currently provides in an industry where it is much needed. One platform, one way of managing repairs and one standardised level of customer experience - all in one. 

What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?

Finding a clear problem or need and having an ambitious vision to solve that problem on a large scale. Also, surround yourself with the right people, in terms of investors, advisors and your team. That vision is an end goal and that it's not a linear journey and you need to be resilient and persistent and it will be a hell of a journey. To stay sane during all the ups and downs, you’ll need the right people around you and building with you to even enjoy it. And crucially, if you don't have a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve and why, it's going to be very hard to convince other people to join and inspire them to work towards your collective goal. 

If we had listened to the market when we first started, telling us our concept was impossible, we wouldn't be where we are today. 

What would be your top marketing tip, to grow a business that is niche?

Know the pain you are trying to address and speak to it. Have a crystal clear understanding of what you are solving for, and make sure this is consistent in your story - not just for you but your whole team. Be creative and think outside of the box to get the message out there, because most of the time, you’ll have to be resourceful.

Start small, build a business case and leverage that. We started in Amsterdam, connected 50 repair shops to our platform and once we could show the value we brought to them, we then used those cases to convince others in new markets to join us. 

Leveraging these “user cases” by sending them directly to repair shops and having them featured in the media, prospects suddenly came to us. By doing this, we went from 50 to 300 repair shops in three months with just two people. 

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

Be resilient and never give up. For your idea and your business to become whatever you want it to be, you have to work extremely hard and make sure you have the right people around you. It’s also crucial to make sure you are enjoying the work you are doing otherwise it will be impossible to motivate yourself to do the necessary work whilst maintaining your goals.

What do you think gives a brand longevity?

From the beginning, we wanted to transform this industry. We're not here to copy things, we’re here to challenge the norm. If you continuously feed this into every aspect of your organisation, you're automatically creating longevity in the entire industry. 

Making hard decisions in the beginning is necessary, but this allows you to focus on the industry, be transformative and keep to your promises. We design everything we build to fit the needs we promised we would address - and then some. 

What plans do you have for Fixico over the next two years?

We plan to continue on our journey to expand further in Europe and beyond. We want to build a global transformative solution. Not just the transactional marketplace we do now, but also build a comprehensive marketplace for both repairers and businesses. By continuing to build out the marketplace on both sides, we aim to keep connecting everyone through our platform.

On top of this, we want to use our platform to provide more insights and training for our repairers and other service providers. This will help them succeed and adapt within a changing industry.