Meet Amy McKechnie, co-founder of Carmoola
Amy McKechnie is the co-founder and Director of Product and Marketing at Carmoola, the quick car finance expert. A serial entrepreneur, McKechnie started her first business while she was still in education. Passionate about dance and performing arts, she spent all her free time and energy outside of school training towards a career in dance.
What is your day-to-day role with the company?
Well as a start-up, you're wearing many hats at the beginning. At the moment, I am looking after product, marketing and operations, which are three quite large areas, which are all closely connected to our customers. So, for me, my day to day changes wildly, from chatting to engineers about the next feature we are going to build or things that we need to fix, to sometimes picking up the phone and chatting to customers, either to get feedback or help them with their car finance. My day could also involve looking into TV and Radio ads, so it is really varied but this is what I really enjoy as you are able to get involved in a lot of areas of the business.
Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise is important. How have you both found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?
There are in fact 5 co-founders and we have been lucky enough to have worked with each other for a long time. Myself and Aidan have been working together for around 9 years now, and Roman and Igor had been working for us in our previous business, so we have been lucky in this aspect that working together has been very simple as we know how to all work together, we have a
lot of established processes. This was very helpful for us in the early stages of building our product because everyone knew where they stood in terms of what to do, and what works best for each other when communicating. So, for me it has been very easy working with the team.
How did you fund the business in the early stages?
All of the co-founders put money in at the beginning, from day one. We then also raised a pre seed round from angel investors, who were interested in supporting the business through the early stages.
However, we were keen to keep it lean until we had proved the concept and proved that people were interested in what we wanted to build and that we were confident the market was ready for it.
How important is company culture to you and what is your top tip to get it right?
Company culture is very important and I think it really starts with company values, which again is something we worked hard to define very early on. All the co-founders share a lot of values, and we really make sure to incorporate those values into our day to day, it is something we talk about all the time. We have a Friday call every week with the whole company and we nominate someone who we think has lived up to our values that week and we give an example of that. It really is as if we are living and breathing our values. Once we have the values down, it makes hiring so much easier because you can hire against those values. Does this person share these values with the company? I think the values piece is super important, but bringing in people who are smart and can add a lot of additional value to the team makes the culture continue to live and breathe through the additional team members. It’s not just a co-founder's culture, it is something that new people really have to fit into as they join.
Another part of culture which is important to me, is openness. For example, I don’t know if you also use slack, but we use Slack for a lot of our communications as a company. Our rule on slack is, unless what you are saying is personal or completely private to you, then that information should be shared and on a completely open channel.
How this works is if you were to receive some feedback on our new product feature or product flat, you wouldn’t privately message the person who you want feedback from. It would be put on a channel where anyone else who is interested in it, can see and are invited to comment and get involved too. This kind of openness is really important for us because we have seen it work the opposite way in previous businesses where people have a lot of one to one conversations where that information is not shared, which means people are not then all on the same page. For me, it is a top tip, to be very open, and it does feel weird to start with as it feels more safe to talk to one person rather than broadcast it. But I do think it makes you more productive as a team.
Any new product launches we should know about?
We are about to launch a re-financing product in the next couple of days, which means that not only can customers come to us and we can help them buy their next car, but if they already have car finance, we can essentially see if we can get them a better deal and in theory save money on their payments every month. It takes a customer about eight minutes to switch to Carmoola, and they can do it all on the app, as they do with our current products.
We see this as very relevant right now due to the cost of living continuously increasing. So, don't cancel your Netflix subscription, but come to us and refinance your car, and save some money there on those big payments. During our research we found out that people were unaware that they can switch from their current finance provider, but actually, anyone can switch at any time if they find a better deal they would prefer to take. So, we hope we can get the word out there and help people save money every month on their car finance.
What do you think gives brands longevity?
I think these days it's quite hard for brands to cut through, as there is a lot of noise everywhere. But for us, especially in our industry, I think that trust is the most important thing that needs to be built from day one. With this in mind, it is sometimes hard for trust to be defined, and I think a lot of people find it difficult to explain why they trust a particular brand or person.
We tend to break this down into two areas. Firstly, character, which means do I like this personal brand, do I want to be involved with this brand? Then also, competency. Do I believe that what they do is what they do really well? Those two areas are things that we try to focus on in our brand, so getting our personality across but also making sure that everything we do is to its highest possible standard so that customers can gain our trust and understand that we do things with their best interests in mind and our work is really high quality.
What are your top three tips to hire and develop talent?
We prioritise smart people who are in line with our company values, which does rely on your company having your company values in place, which luckily we do. We also really put the emphasis on people who we believe fit with those values and are smart, rather than whether they have relevant experience in this field, or particular way of work, as we believe that smart people will learn. I think it is important to pay team members what they are worth, if you are hiring smart people who are bringing a lot of value to your team then that is top of the market salaries for that particular area. I think it is important that people are compensated properly.
The final strategy we use is that we provide team members with business context, and as much information and freedom, so that they can make those right decisions all the time as opposed to specific tasks where they go away and work on the task individually. We talk to them widely about what the business is trying to achieve, our goals, challenges, and strategy, so that everyone in their individual role can make the right decisions based on the wider context.
Why do you think your business has had such a positive impact across your industry?
It is early days on this, but the car finance industry is huge, and has been around for years, so the challenge in the car finance industry is a lot of the companies, a lot of the lenders are predominantly acquiring customers through a B2B model. So, from a broker, their focus is on their relationship with the broker which means they don't force them to innovate around the customer experience, which is where we are different.
We have a direct consumer offering and we really focus on whether the experience is going to wow the customer. Or are the customers going to come away from our product with the best possible rates. Are we giving them the most choice in the loan they choose to take? Are we educating them about car finance and helping them break it down, so it makes sense. Whereas, I think the traditional industry is not where their head is at, but it is more they are relying on the brokers and who they should accept.
What are the most important questions entrepreneurs should be asking themselves?
The main question that we always ask ourselves is what unique and new value are we creating? It is quite simple, if you are not creating value, then there is no point. New and unique value is where it is at. In terms of positioning us differently against competitors, and in terms of consumers seeing us and saying wow that is why i am going with Carmoola, because they offer that. So, for me, it is a unique value.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
The biggest lesson for me is the people and the team and getting that right is the most important part. As the wrong people, or people who are not confident in what they are doing, can have a massive impact on the business. In our previous business we may have hired more junior people in order to save costs, and this was our main focus, but this really does not work in an early stage business, as you really need people who are confident, and capable of knowing how to take the next steps forward, rather than focusing on the cost saving element of it, which I think is a big lesson for me.
What keeps you motivated as an entrepreneur when you hit bumps in the road?
It is very up and down, being in an early stage business. You can very quickly go from having an amazing day, to quite a stressful day. But, I do like that element of it, and the focus always comes back to the customer. I am speaking to real people, and these people cannot get a car without us, so the fact that we are helping them get their next car, which enables them to get to work, or pick their kids up from school, really reminds us of what we are actually doing here, and really helps us to find motivation, even when you are having a tough day.
