How to Hit #1 on the App Store with a $0 Marketing Budget

I started my own agency from that and basically said they'd have to hire five people to replace me. We got um 30,000 vehicles out in like seven or eight days. I would refresh and there would be like thousand more people that are signed up. They spend $5 million on their app and they didn't have their notifications working for a year and a half. I think I had a nightmare the whole the whole night last night about AI agents. If you look at the international players here, they're just dinosaurs and they can't move in this market. When I found out the NZTA was raising prices by 3,000%, it was really stressful.

Just go and do it and see what happens.

Ideas are worth like jack [ __ ] Absolute jack [ __ ] Like if you can't execute there's nothing.

Just take that initiative to actually take whatever crazy ideas that they might have and just try to see what comes with it.

Don't be afraid of ambition. Chase it, love it, wrap your arms around it and and say it out loud.

New Zealanders don't know any better. They will just get up and give it a shot. That's why we were first to get to the top of Mount Everest. Go to dream that ultimate dream like what is it that you ultimately want to do and it's all achievable. All right, welcome to Techmates Steph. Thanks for being here. So today we have one of the most relatable very relatable human um pain point which is car admin. We're joined by Steph Kennard, who is the founder and CEO of Bonnet and Suzil's passes growing vehicle compliance platform. So Steph, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Thank you very much for having me, guys.

Cool. Yeah, before we get into the crazy metrics of the driving growth of Bonnet and you guys are actually doing, um, I'd love to kind of talk about how you got here. You're very interesting background because you taught yourself web design when you were 15. Um I'm just curious how much of that came that drive and that that curiosity came from your family because I know your your uncle Dave was a pioneer in the automotive software space, right?

Yeah. Um yeah, this is actually one of the first times I've spoken about this more in depth. So I'm quite excited to kind of share it. Um my upbringing is quite interesting. So I did grow up like in a single parent household in Christ Church. Although in saying that my dad lived in Orange County and he he basically like from a very young age raised Trans Ams. I'm not sure if you guys know what those are, but they're very cool race cars. Um, and he basically uh redid old classics and shipped them around the world for like 25 years out of Orange County. I even though it was brought up by my mom and it with quite like a minimal kind of um upbringing and we were like didn't have a lot, you know, your normal grit story. I also just love cars definitely via him. My whole family did really to be honest.

Um, and so from a young age I all I think from about 8 years old I just had this burning desire to just be successful. I mean I think that's just the general tone of it. Like I started to breed pigeons. I was like breeding rabbits. I was trying to get a job at 8 but no one would hire me. I ended up convincing someone at a bakery to hire me in bone chickens. Um, which was the most disgusting job ever. Um, I just always had a job from at about 15 years old.

my uncle who lived in Oakuckland which was more well off than us and um also loved cars came down and said you should come up to Oakland and live with me cuz I was just bugging school work at that point like I just wasn't going to school at 15 probably 14 to be honest and so I was like oh this looks this looks cool he's got like 13 cars like this is a glamorous lifestyle I'll do this and so I went out to Oakuckland and um he had a web design agency and so he is like a legend in his own right so when he was in his 20s who used to follow the F1 one drivers around Europe and paint like murals for their houses. And so he was an amazing artist. Um and he was traveling around with his wife at the time. Um and when they decided to have kids, um they came back here and he was like, "Well, I can't do that anymore. So what am I going to do?"

And it was the com boom and he basically bought all the OEM like domain names in New Zealand for the OEMs, like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, like everyone you can think of. And he basically built them websites. and he went to them and said, "Look, I've built your website. If this thing takes off, you'll have to pay me." And 15 years later, probably a little bit more than that, when I arrived at 15 years old, he had all the OEM brands in New Zealand. Um, a lot of them before they got shipped out to Germany and stuff like that when it got a bit bigger. So, so yeah. So, I mean, a really interesting story. He being an artist first had a very very big like he always used to say at all the time, kiss principle, like keep a symbol, keep a symbol. And so, all the websites that he built was like kiss principle. um three clicks in your hour.

But with that, what happened was he had all these dealerships um and trade me was already around and the and the sales guys would basically need to like upload a vehicle to TradeMe and to the the OEM or dealership site. So he built this little component which was called car updata which was like like a pretty common um platform when I arrived but still quite manual. So for 3 hours every morning I had to press these API buttons every day. So I just remember pressing those API buttons um and after like four 14 whiteboard sessions I kind of started to understand how data worked and the flow on the push and so it was ingrained in me like I think the five years that I worked for him it was like kiss principal ding cars

and so actually where it started so then I worked for that carer and of course like I learned more about the industry there and stuff like that but it was really my uncle that kind of really taught me like like how to be an entrepreneur. He made it look easy. You know, the good ones do. And then data cars kiss. Yeah. And then Yeah. And then I

launched on it 10 years later.

And stuff. I mean, maybe just one other one more question like what gave you that drive? You said you were eager to just dive in and start working and boning chickens when you were Yeah.

My mom just had no money basically. Like we just had nothing. Like I was I used to go to school and have like the two-minute noodles like not even cook them just eat them out of the packet. I mean I don't want to make it sound like super super dire because there was a lot of families that were a lot worse than us and we had a roof over our head and my mom like owned her house but like it was really tough and I could just see her working so much and like not coming back to five and like what for? Like I know what for but what for? You know like what we want more. I want more. I want more freedom and I wanted like at the time it was like a 300 seat and I was like that's cool. I want that. How am I going to get that? I'm certainly not going to get it by like and at the time it felt like school was just not for me. I found it really hard to listen to people telling me what to do ironically.

Yeah,

that makes sense.

Yeah. And it was kind of inevitable it sounds like that you end up doing something with cars or in the auto automotive world. And you you mentioned you went into the corporate automotive world for a while and I think you were head of digital

for FCA um for some time.

Yeah. What was that like and like how I guess from our perspective it's probably quite archaic the way they operate these brands. Yeah. Maybe take us a little bit into that time and what you learned there.

It was I loved working for Fred Fat Chrysler. So F Chrysler had their dealer website. Sophie Kry was like the head like distribution in New Zealand and they basically had all the dealerships like um Andrew Sims and things like that. So my uncle did the dealer websites and so there was like a dealer conference that I went to and basically they just were like can you come work for us from there. So they kind of poached me from my uncle but at the same time I was kind of like a bit bored there at that time I like kind of got to the top. Um so I started working for the Chrysler and because I was selftaugh I just could do everything or at least thought I could do everything.

um like I did all the digital um like campaign planning and all the websites and stuff but for example like we had the highest spend on TV at the time like we had we were spending the most in terms of like ads and we would get the ads made from the um from the network and I can't remember honestly who it was or the ad company and a person was sick and they're like Steve can you do this and I tried to I got all the running footage out of Detroit and I probably failed 15 times sending the wrong like um video format to the network and then on the 16th time I got it right and then they never asked them to do it again. It was just me doing all the TV commercials. Loved the like I think it wasn't a typical corporate. It was definitely more corporate. Like our um CEO at the time was really keen to just show as much acne as I would be willing to take and I was just taking it all.

So as much as it was corporate, it was a really fun place to work and especially because like the brands are just awesome. like Jeep Cry and Dodge Fa Romeo coming out of America they don't have as much like hold over the creative as Germany brands so at the time when the Mercedes like Mercedes asked me to work from them out of Fair Chrysler I went there and I quickly realized for an interview I quickly realized the creative limitations were you didn't really have any and so FA was quite cool because of that um and it taught me a lot and then yeah and then I started my own agency from that and basically said they'd have to hire five people to replace me and this year was like you're a debt but okay and so I had all the brands for like an agency and I just had an agency for six or seven years and did then

yeah and then I mean comparing the corporate world with um you know your light you know your entrepreneurial experience with your uncle and what you do now and the agency you said it was still quite an entrepreneurial environment um

do you think like moving forward even car brands are being disrupted by you know Chinese car brands by Tesla Um, do you think they can catch up or do you think they fundamentally have to change the way they operate?

Yeah. Uh, I think that BYD and Tesla are doing an amazing job. Ironically, Chrysler is now distribution for for BYD in New Zealand. So, it's been interesting seeing and then BYD has been one of the first brands to say to their fleets, we can actually connect your OEM. So, I feel like Fair Chrysler is actually rebranded to Tico now. It's really good people inside of it really encouraging tech. I think we're I mean, yes, but I think they're going to catch up fast. I think that they're realizing quickly that, you know, if they don't catch up, they're going to be nowhere. And so, like with today's AI products and stuff like that, I think that they're not falling asleep at the wheel, per se, but they are currently lagging. Yeah.

Steph, have you um you've been in a self-driving car?

I haven't. No, I haven't. Yeah, I would I would love to. Like, we um I get so excited about the OEM connect. So we're just we're probably about 10 days from like launching out of beta testing and charging for our OEM connect. So we've got if you give me your number plate or technically the number but I can find them from your number plate for BYD Mercedes or Tesla we can basically connect into the engine within well some of them are instant B is pretty good Mercedes pretty good. Tesla looks to just throw a little bit more permissions on there. Um, and then I've got more sensor data than the hardware we're currently selling with no barrier to entry and it's just it's just beautiful. The technology in New Zealand, we are the first to I think commercialize it.

Maybe maybe before we dive into that, I was actually

curious about your your time at Fiat Chrysler because that's when the light bulb went off Kabonet, right? You're working with the national service centers and you noticed a pattern.

Take us into the specific moment and what you were seeing every day. That made you realize I have to build an app.

Yeah, it it where I actually started was completely separate from where it ended, which is a familiar story, but Jeep Wranglers, they have a million parts and you can't just buy a Jeep Wrangler and then go and just get a part fitted. You've got to look at like a brochure catalog. This was 10 years ago. This is probably more than 10 years ago. This was 10 years ago before co and so the original idea was like, can we connect? I know the make, model, and year of your Wrangler by your number plate. Why can't we just connect to see what vehicle accessories we can buy for that? Like why do we have to look at a brochure? What do I have to walk into a brochure? They probably don't have one and if they do it's out of date. That was the original thought process for Bonner. So Pon Bonet was always meant to be like a parts accessory connection kind of thing. Um and then uh that was the idea.

I kind of built that I had built that with um a dealership down in Tonga um and then quickly real and then co happened. I qu I I was starting to realize before CO happened that there's just no parts inventory at these dealerships and even in the like the second tier of like uh parts accessories they still don't hold a lot of this and it wasn't really like a people wouldn't really pay for it. It wasn't enough of a tan and then um co obviously happened and no one even had parts after that for 4 years. So when I was going through that process, I realized that the data was pretty accessible and there was quite a lot of it for vehicles and when could that be and all of a sudden we had the the licensing coming through and um and that was a valuable thing because people were using spreadsheets or just didn't simply didn't remember. I think I missed my W and rejo every single year.

Well, not anymore, but I was always missing it. Um and then I had a diesel car and then I was that was just even like harder. So yeah, so that's where the that's where kind of like the light bulb come came from was the just the connection of the data and just knowing that that's actually like vehicle owned information, not not protected by any privacy kind of laws or anything like that.

Would you notice drivers kind of messing up? Was it was it cuz it was I think it was around expired wolves and around expired services that they were they were just not able to

it would it was um the servicing people would just miss their servicing at service centers and so I worked with a lot of the service centers through dealers to kind of like how do we get these people in like remind them that a service is due. or sending letters, you know, or phoning them and it was just very manual process but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but bit but heavy. Um and so I came from the servicing side and the part side before the licensing side came in and then I built that with the dealers and service centers thinking that it was going to be a consumer app supported by service and dealers for connectivity and like service reminders and stuff like that. Um I didn't even think it was going to be something for fleets until we launched the consumer app and got the traction from fleets.

Cool. And you mentioned that you had your own design agency and while you were having this light bulb moment, you you mentioned you started building that MVP straight away. Was that kind of an unfair advantage that you were able to kind of just go and solve a problem because you had that agency?

Well, I didn't start building it straight away. I sat on it for probably 2 or 3 years actually. And I do wonder now with the boom that we had before co I feel like it would have been hectic and amazing if we' probably launch it just a bit sooner. But I think I just had a light bulb moment one day and I just told my designer to just design up the whole app. And so we designed up the whole app and then kind of just sat on it for a while, like a while. And then one day I was just like, well, I am so excited by this. Like why haven't I The reason why I hadn't started building it is cuz I had WordPress developers. I didn't have the mobile app like engineers or developers and I hadn't built like a web application yet either. So it was new territory. I I understood the logic and like the architecture of what what it should do but I just didn't really know where to start.

So I just started I just started um building it through a new team that I found over um in India. Yeah. And they were horrible to deal with and built the whole thing entirely wrong and had to start again. Um and then take two take two um we got there. Yeah, we got there and we launched um I got pregnant. I was talking to Mark about this and yourself on that panel. I got pregnant. It was the most um uh yeah biggest kick up my ass that I'd ever had. I was like slowly working working on it. Probably like 5 to 7% if that of my time out of the agency was dedicated to Bonnet. And then it was just like I just knew that it was I just knew that it was got to be massive. I like I didn't dedicate enough time to it. And so I just dedicated I think I switched it was like 7% Charlie and Co. and hired someone there and then just went fulltime on it. Um and then launched it. Yeah.

Launched the consumer app.

Yeah. And what was that moment when you realized I need to spend all of my time on Bonnet versus uh I can do this five five to 7%. Was there like one specific moment or was that conviction that you built over time? It

was more just I I always wanted to. It was just making sure I wasn't letting the agency down. So I just hired some staff to and to and I trained them for a good like 6 months so I could kind of step back. So, it was more just being able to like we had some really really big wins with the agency that there was some really big some good dollars coming through. We started to build web applications and it just allowed me to free out my time. Um, and I just basically got to that point and then yeah, just went all in and it's just, you know, you're doing an agency for so long and you're building cool things for other people. It's just so much different and like so much more exciting when you're building something that you're that is yours. Yeah. Steph, what made you what made you feel like it's time to go all in? And was that scary?

Scary because I feel like Yeah, I'm not sure if I feel scared very often. I feel like I really like the challenge. I just kind of I don't know how it's it's hard to kind of describe, but I I just always kind of feel like I knew like I kind of always shut my eyes and just like knew that it was going to be big. And I was just saying it was more just about having the resources to be able to step back from Charlie and Co and make sure those clients weren't getting abandoned. Um and it was yeah it just was inevitable for me. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of points like that that I'm like oh just the validation there's been a lot of validation points where I'm like trying to go even harder and now it's so exciting cuz we got AI can go even harder.

So So you never felt scared? You just felt excitement a new challenge?

Yeah. I don't think that I've ever felt scared. I just feel excitement. Um, and I I just get so excited by like the vehicle the vehicle data world and what we can kind of do for do in it. Um, and uh how we can just make it easy for people. Like I don't know if you guys have ever said seen like um fleet management software but it's like DOSs put through a shredder. Like it's very araic like the whole fleet management um industry is broken I feel.

And is that just because there's no competition? Um, so the telemetics companies, which are the hardware ones, they make their own hardware. They were born out of the 2000s and they're not SAS. I mean, you know, they're in the cloud, but you can't sign up for them and kind of have a have a play with them. They just um I don't feel like they've ever had anyone design the the them like with KISS principle in mind. has been developers constantly iterating, which there is nothing wrong with it, but when you're dealing with the everyday person, which potentially could be like a a plumber with 15 cars, they don't really want to log into a platform that exhausts them before they even click on something. And I feel like that's what's happening in that in the industry. I feel like we want to be a camera of fleet management, which is kind of why we're making accessible for everyone to sign up.

We're making it our vehicles free because we're just really trying to drive that product growth in the top funnel. But yeah there and then on top of that like all of the systems for fleet management quite siloed at the moment like the health and safety checklist either done manually or through another system there's no government integration like hardware you can only sometimes use a fleet management company if you've got the hardware so for the boss's car or for other people that don't have don't have GPS they can't kind of put that vehicle in the system it's just very fragmented and it's not just in New Zealand it's fragmented like everywhere there's only really uh three SAS companies support.

Um I I guess take us back to um when you actually launched Bonnet for the first time on the app store. I read somewhere that you went to number one in uh week three on the app store. I'm passing Tik Tok and other very very popular apps.

U and basically on zero almost zero marketing budget. So how did you do that?

Had literally zero marketing budget. Um so we launched it I had a guy Matt working for me at the time. We launched it and one of my good friends is an influencer and she without asking basically just pushed it on her social media which got about 700 downloads and that was amazing. And then through that one news actually picked it up and because there wasn't any thing like it at the time because the like TAM I guess for their news story like everyone's got a car they published a story and it sat on the homepage of one news for like what felt like forever and we've done a lot of PR now after we've understood the strength and the power of PR. This was organic but nothing is gave us the amount of traction this had. you got um 30,000 vehicles out in like seven or eight days. It was just I would refresh and there would be like thousand more people that are signed up.

It was hectic and I just remember the feeling being like like a mixture of just like holy this is crazy and holy I'm not sure if our systems can handle this and just so much emotion and also just being everywhere like I don't read one news like but everyone was reading the news um and then it got picked up organically through a few other ones like um seven sharp and then natural like the radio stations and everything. It was yeah hectic. It was crazy. Like I just remember having a shower thinking to myself like it was just an overwhelming feeling of like this is insane.

And also just I really hope that everyone gets to feel this at one point in their life because it was just you you you go to sleep dreaming of like what you want the product to be and like you know the launch or something but you kind of forget like actually what like or even think about what it feels like to get product validation. Um and it was that extreme high of product validation and the fact it wasn't breaking. Um, and it was worth it.

Tell us tell us more.

And yeah, it was just it was awesome. And then even like cooler than that was just the amount of industry like leaders that reached out to me and came to the mouth came to my house and sat down with me like I'm not sure if we can wake up they're not going to listen to this but like um the CEO of ETN Z like AA like all the top industry people have seen it. Actually, one piece that I'm missing from this is that um I first posted in the New Zealand te tech ecosystem page which went viral like 700 or so like likes and for the te ecosystem that's actually where I feel like a lot of the industry leaders saw it or shared it and so we had yeah we got meetings with trade me like we just got meetings with everyone straight away and I think that they thought that we were like 2 years or 3 years I don't know what they thought really but like I didn't think they a weird launch.

I'd like to see it on Tesco. Yeah.

Tell us more about what were those feelings that you felt. Was it excitement? Was it like, you know, cuz I I know exactly what you're talking about that high of like users using the thing that you built

and actually using it and liking it and the numbers going up. Yeah.

But what is that? How would you describe that?

I just think it was like ex like extreme proudness. Like extreme really really like high volume like being proud and just like so stoked like Yeah. just really excited and just more so proud. I think that like Yeah. And you don't feel that very often when you're a founder. I mean, I get excited about product. I don't often feel proud. I don't think in that sense. Yeah. So, that was really cool. And just everyone seen it was awesome, too. Like, I've been building this thing for ages. There was times where I'm like, I've just built this whole thing wrong. Like the database was just like it wasn't even you couldn't even Oh, it was disgusting. and just to keep going. Like I feel like that's probably one of my biggest strengths is I'll just never stop. Like I haven't stopped. I actually don't know what that really feels like.

I think you know you just should pivot and you should scatter a gun approach like a bunch of stuff and theory is that one will land right and if it's not landing just move. Yeah.

Was there anyone who reached out on that day who whose sort of noticing you was the most exciting or made you feel the best?

Yeah. Um, there was definitely a few. I mean, I always I joked about um I joked about like you know how you can right click on browsers and just change the text of a headline. Like I I changed the text of the headline and I was like cuz we had VTNZ and MTA and stuff like I kind of like on here.

It's a safe space.

Okay. Ero at the time I thought this was a lot of money as well. This is not my goal anymore. E-OD buys Born of like $30 million or something like that and I I screenshotted it. I made it look real and I sent it to my group chat. But then the E-road um CEO reached out and was like, "Hey, we think really what what you've been doing is really cool. You should come in for a meeting." And then we had like all the e-ro employees like sign up. We could kind of see them coming through. And at the time like E-rogue was the biggest like I mean this is three years ago before their slight downfall now. But yeah, that was like the pinnacle of what I thought was really awesome at the time.

Sounds cool. That's cool. What about your mom?

Yeah. Well, I mean like she's just absolutely my biggest cheerleader. She's the woman that's like comments a paragraph on like all of our ads.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So, you built this app and the data you start pulling in is really crazy, right? Your recent stats show that almost 50% of cars on New Zealand roads are driving with an expired wolf.

Yeah.

And is it just, you know, do we have just a nation of lazy drivers or is the system fundamentally broken? What what's actually going on in someone's head when they're driving?

Yeah.

It's a third of people don't get a rejo war of fitness. I think it's um a mixture of a few things like definitely the um the person forgetting um the cost of getting a waft the fact that you need to get a registration before a waft before your registration as well. But there's just a huge amount of vehicles that are on the road just unlicensed and I don't really think you like that it's policed much anymore to be honest like unless you're a boy raised and you enjoy something completely obvious pulled over that will naturally obviously check your compliance. I don't they're not doing any checks anymore.

Obviously for businesses that risk is just you can't you can't have that in a business having no w like the fines for a commercial vehicle are a lot different than consumer especially if you're carrying goods like it's thousands of dollars this pain point for business is massive it's kind of like oh you know well if I get caught right I mean it might be like $500 to get new tires or how much is the fine for like a overdue wire fitness less than $200. So yeah,

but is it do you think does that mean the system is fundamentally broken?

It literally is broken. There's a lot of places it's broken and u I met the prime minister actually two weeks ago and I was talking to him about this and he said we need to get more people running private companies in in the government because they just spend so much money. Like the NZTA launched an app actually we were talking to the NZTA pre-launch about this with them which is the government here in New Zealand. They've launched an app since we launched that um shows you when your W and your rejo and your ruck license is due. So you can't put in your adometer rating to calculate how much is left and you don't can't purchase anything through there and there's no servicing or maintenance or anything like that. But they spend $5 million on their app and they didn't have their notifications working for a year and a half like so I mean that's not entirely broken. It's quite wrong.

But the systems that they actually send out the data, like we launched Bonnet at the cost of 2 cents per time I check your car's licensing, it was 2 cents. In 3 months, it went up 3,000% to 48. And so that was like a crap moment that we had to completely pivot slash we couldn't make it free anymore. We had to do a crediting system for the data that we were using and introduce a flee plan that works in our algorithm for a lot more expensive than we were planning to. So I mean it doesn't make any sense to me why the government would do that when they're trying to push the ability for private the private sector to help them with road user charges. Why they why do they have a system that is just push and not pull like that? We don't know. They never tell us when someone's license is due. We've got to build an algorithm to continuously guess literally when someone's license is due.

Yet, they've taken the price up 3,000% and they're also saying, "Oh, we want the private sector to automate this for us, but like hold it for a second." Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things that are broken about that. There there's a reason why the contact of the NZTA that we've been dealing with. Um, the position has changed. The person in the position has changed four times in like four years. Yeah. sadly.

Do you think do you think do you think there's there's a route for you to work with government on this or or do you find do you feel like this is probably just going to be something that you solve and government will just give up at some point and just like default to having you be the kind of the

So there is a um RFI they've just done legislation where they've asked um industry leaders to kind of comment on it so they can help draft the best version or take the feedback from the private sector. And so we've been a part of that and they've been very openly like quite candid about we want to use the latest technology, we want to do this and that. We really value your feedback. Like the people behind the the push to do that are great, but what ends up coming out is kind of more of a different story. I think like um in New Zealand the minimum amount of road user you can buy is a,000 and that's on average $76. If they're moving 3.8 8 million vehicles to that system next year. Why is anyone in South Oakland going to buy something they can't see for $76? Like they need to bring the increments of purchase to a more manageable amount.

Otherwise, they're probably going to end up with more people non-compliant and less money ironically if they didn't just do that. So, if they do that or not, I'm not sure. I mean, they haven't said anything about that, but they probably won't. Yeah.

Interesting. So you had a massive influx of everyday consumers just trying to understand where they're at, a way to find maybe and suddenly you realize that you kind of accidentally built a B2B business, right? Because you had businesses trying to manage their 50 vehicle fleets on your consumer app. Take us to that exact moment and what did you realize the consumer app was actually

um I mean if anyone's ever tried to find product market fit before when you've got over a 100 fleets saying build something and we'll pay for it generally you listen. Um so that's kind of what happens. So the the owners of the companies were saying, "I'm I'm getting my office manager to use your app, but she really needs it on desktop. Can you please build this on desktop?" And so in about 3 months, we turned out the the web app version of Bonnet. Um and we launched a lot of people into beta that most of them actually ended up paying us. So that was huge validation piece. Um for a second there, I was like, I don't want to be a fleet platform. I want to be a consumer. And then I was like, well, hold on for a second. Let's just look at the data here. And also the NZTA actually called me and they said, "We're launching an app if you need a pivot."

There's been some really cool people in this industry, which I didn't expect. I really thought that like a female in a in an automotive industry would have just kind of been, I guess, maybe laughed at or just at least ignored. I'm not sure, but I had the NZTA call me and give me a heads up that they were launching and tell me what features they were launching with, which was crazy to me. They came to my h well, the guy running the app came to my house for lunch. And so with that knowledge, I pivoted. I didn't drop the consumer quite a while to figure out what where the place of consumers was in the product. Like it was enough I don't know if you guys have seen our latest investor update but we actually um like self-tuned the revenue from consumers at the end of last year on purpose. So we basically took it from two free vehicles for consumers to five.

Um and the reason is there wasn't there what wasn't just enough value for them when they could do what they were doing on the NCTA app. and if we kind of just needed to compete and also just like drive that product market growth because a lot of fleets do come from using that. So we did that on purpose. Um and consumer for us is really just a marketing tool per se and it really is the edge that we've got going international as well going into Australia which we're very very um um heads down bum up on at the moment. Having that side of on it just opens us up to being completely standalone from anyone that's doing fleet telematics or anything like that.

And Z maybe maybe just to kind of zoom out a little bit and to explain what what your app actually does and kind of what are the tailwinds that are around the electrical vehicle adoption things like that that are driving that are driving.

Yeah. So what the app does for anyone with a vehicle essentially they download it and put their number plate in and it tells them instantly what kind of vehicle they've got because the NZTA data registry knows it tells you when your vehicle licensing like W road us charge the due and then you can put your service in you can connect it to a service agent so when anything like servicing is due you can click a button it takes you there you can add up to five cars I mean an unlimited amount of vehicles machines sorry and machines track engine hours. So, for the average family, it's um mom, dad, daughter car, lawn mower, maybe like a motocross bike or something like that, and they put all of that in there, and they share ownership between their um family, and that's kind of free.

What the businesses do is they sign up on the website version of Bonnet, they load their vehicles, say like the average is 17, they invite the drivers, and the drivers use the app too, but in a way that the driver vehicles are linked back to the business. Um, the business can then also set up GPS so they can get devices installed on their fleet or if the vehicles are new enough where you can connect into the engine without the need of hardware. And then they've got all the vehicles on a map. We can track where the drivers have been speeding. They can set up inspection checklists um for health and safety um and all of that kind of side of it. So it's a really end to- end system for fleets from five cars up to like 300 to manage their vehicles. Um, and that's essentially where we make our money.

And then a lot of the um, consumers that sign up, about three of them are fleets that don't really know what we do. And then the boys here ring the bus and get them on on a demo and convert them onto the fleet side. Yeah.

And but one of the what are the tailwinds that are driving adoption of Bonnet because I understood in the beginning that because it's hard to tax electric cars

because they're not consuming gas or fuel, right? Then you have to sort of have it be based on miles driven.

Yeah. So, we've got a lot of um electric vehicles using Bonnet because they just don't know when their license for road user charges is due. And most vehicles need to get five new licenses a year. And the BYDs and Teslas just I mean they've got to manually remember what their license coverage is like uncovered up to 20,000 KS and then they've got to go on to the NZTA website and they've got to purchase more and then they've got to remember again and it's very very fragmented. So we're the only app in New Zealand that basically allows you to and reminds you of when your roads are charged with due and now we can connect into that engine of the Tesla BYD and set and forget the road the charges. So Steve who has BYD downloads Bonnet he um gives us authority to connect to his BYD.

We do that the next day the diagnostics are released into Bonnet and then he fills out a form to tell us does he want to purchase in increments of 1,000 2,000 5,000 KS at a time and then we basically just do that for him. um and the payments are taken out of his account um and he doesn't need to worry about it. So that's the product that we're doing for both consumers and fleets. Um and register charges just at d and diesels and electric vehicles at the moment is a massive pain point let alone when it's going to be yeah petrol's joining the system

and the New Zealand government is trying to put every vehicle um into the r system by next year. Is that right?

Yeah.

That's like 3.5 million maybe more cars in New Zealand. How messy is that roll out going to be? And how are you guys positioning yourself to take advantage?

I mean, like we're um we're realists. So, I mean, we believe that we can get 10% of the the people's choice market. And what that means to us is, you know, that the people that want to automate things, it's a it's a heavily privacy kind of conscious thing that people actually connecting the engine to us. So, we're working on kind of like our brand presence and the trust side of things at the moment. That basically is going to allow people to do that. People will then have the option to either go manually onto the ZTA website or just use Bonnet without connecting to the engine but simply having to enter in their once a month. Just with that knowledge, we can actually see them forget their road user charges but they just need to do that manual piece. Other companies that will allow um road user charges to be purchased through um AA.

However, we had heard we have heard of um like petrol stations maybe letting you do it at the pump and things like that. But there's a lot of noise around who is and who isn't going to move into the sector. But at the moment there is a lot of commission to be made if you do move into the sector. But then with the amount of volume coming in like it's probably going to be one6 of potentially what it currently is. So it's going to be an interesting space. Like we we are doing this for our fleets and our consumers, but it's definitely like a sub 10% of our revenue at the moment. Our revenue is coming from telematics and fleets. Yeah.

What if the government changes the rules around all this stuff? I mean, yeah, you're essentially subject to that regulation in a way.

Yeah.

Are you worried that at some point that's going to disappear and your entire kind of value proposition to small and mediumsiz businesses? It's not going to be relevant anymore. Not at all because we're telling me that some fleets. So like I mean we are sold in a painoint for this sector but we I have consciously in the last 6 months basically like we have got pretty amazing metrics with fleek's telematic side and the whole kind of like fleet fleet tech side um the consumer and fleet set and forget for road user charges would be a big win if it happens which we believe it will but I'm not banking on it to be the only kind of like angle Bonnet has anymore. The government is the government. You just don't know what you're going to get. We currently are the only kind of company out there that's doing it and we're trying to move as fast as possible.

So, we're we're not slowing down on that side by any by any means, but all of the features that we're building for consumer are coming through because we've built them already for fleet, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense. I want to talk a little bit about your capital race and how you went from launching this app and going viral to setting up the company and raising money for it. I guess if you were in Silicon Valley and you'd get to 30,000 users in such a short time and go on to number one on the app store, you'd probably raise tens of millions of dollars straight away. Um, and then with the B2B pivot, you'd probably raise tens of millions more. But you went and raised money from local VCs, including us. How do you think about kind of building a company in New Zealand at the capital efficiency that companies like you probably have versus Silicon Valley?

Yeah. Well, wouldn't that be nice? But I mean, I think it really makes you do everything really well, you know, and anything that's not working, you exit really fast. For example, like our attribution tracking, we spent 3 months basically doing that wrong and using a system that we shouldn't have used. And so, we just cut it out straight away and we moved. I think um and I'm sure this isn't the case for everyone, but I could see this happening to a lot of um startups. if you've got that much money, it kind of just makes you a little bit numb to things and you probably see things maybe three times after the point of you probably needing to see them. So, I think it makes us really nimble and also very for just the fact that we move really fast because we see the needle moving so fast. Um, and I think that gives us an advantage after everything.

Unfortunately, it dilutes my shares, but hopefully we're at the point now where um we're really really good with exactly what we know we're selling. We know what ads work um and we know when we go into this next raise, the capital is going to be used super efficiently.

Maybe on the notion of capital efficiency, we talked a little bit about this before we started recording, but now with AI, you can probably do even more with less.

Yeah, I Yeah, maybe share, can you share some stories on how you're thinking about deploying the air?

Yep. So, I was just before I came into this um meeting, I was actually standing out there with the team and one of them joked, "Are you going to fire us now that you're getting claw in the office?" And I said, "No." I said, "No one's losing their jobs. We're about to go into Australia and it would be great if I could use the same team to deploy over there." So, it's like, we know what we're doing in New Zealand now. Let's try and automate as much as we can and then just remain low headcount as we go into another country. So that's my goal, my immediate goal. I mean, you can't replace knowledge, especially when we're this small. I feel like the speed of delivery is just like I think I had a nightmare the whole the whole night last night about AI agents and just like I have got so much like fire up my ass to do this as fast as possible.

obviously the best that we can but I'm like I just know probably like onetenth of what you guys even if that of AI and its ability and if any of our competitors is thinking it about it in the same way as me they're just going to like overtake like I just feel like it's the most important thing to focus on is like how can we build this into our company to kind of automate as much as we can and make our delivery as smart as possible and our products delivered as fast as possible as best as they can and obviously like have a heavy um um point on on the security as well with everything that we're doing. And so I I'm just extremely motivated to build this into the company as fast as possible to make sure that we become the market leader in fleet tech in the next two years in New Zealand and then dominate as fast as we can in Australia.

I think you even you you even started speaking faster when you start

I know scares me. I'm like

heart rate going up.

But it's so

Yeah. But but on on that nightmare, I mean um I guess if you could if you look at it from the positive side and we talked a little bit about this earlier, you can probably experiment and do things and ask for forgiveness when the AI goes rogue and you know accidentally messages somebody they shouldn't have.

Yeah.

Whereas your competitors, they might not be able to experiment as fast, right?

Yeah. I think um I mean going back to like the 20-year-old fleet tech companies, fleet software companies, like forgive my French, but it's run by just like big corporates, white old men, I don't think they're going to allow it to come in as fast at all as what I'm trying to work with. I think um I think the competitors in the space will come out from underneath us potentially. I mean I think that we're a little bit derisked having OEM telematics and hardware in terms of what we do but the compliance side I feel like could be something that AI could do. So I'm just I'm quite aware of this whole space but I if you're looking at the competitors in the market who's leading the market in New Zealand at the moment and Navman E-Road CEO just stood down after 11 years. That's a hard beast to move as well and they've got terrible customer service.

Pretty much everyone that was with them in New Zealand hates them or are stuck in a contract and will leave them. Nav man's been up for sale for the last 3 years globally and doesn't pick up the phone. Like our big titans are definitely sinking and half sunk. It's the It's the other kind of ones that are underneath here that will be able to be as um nimble as us that is probably more on my mind.

Tell us how you're um deploying AI and agents. Those are the most exciting kind of applications that you found.

We're still at the beginning stages. I mean, we're hiring another developer here at the moment and obviously like your natural like claude kind of components are helping speed delivery up and we used to have to use a graphic designer and now we don't because Claude's pretty much got all the um the assets that she needs and then it just delivers you know something in 5 minutes instead of like 3 days which is great in terms of like because we're compliance first as a business um we have it is kind of admin heavy there is just some companies that need a lot of handholding with that and so we've got um admin staff here. So that's the whole sign that I'm trying to automate. I believe the whole thing can really be automated and those those people can kind of be put in better things. That's where I'm trying to deploy it.

At the moment we are in the very early stages of the first core what um and then I'm hoping that after that works out and we've got our um head around how the system works and the capabilities each department will have their own. of the sales guys, it would be doing all the proposals, spitting them out, potentially looking at lists and like identifying um sales segments that um are the highest ROI and underserved um and things like that and just doing the things that really just have forgotten about but can really help like land us the deals. And then of course I'm currently got an internship or summer of tech for AI engineer. So we have, as you can imagine, a huge amount of data about vehicles. And so their job is just to come in and just basically look, what can we be doing with this data that we're not doing with this data? What kind of insights can we be giving to our fleets?

Like how can we save the money and make the vehicle safer? And just what cool [ __ ] can you do with this data basically? Um, and how can we deliver that to them as fast as possible? And then on top of that as well, we're going to be doing the AI agent. Um, so anyone that's enterprise basically can connect via a data source and run their own like language model via the bonnet data. So instead of them having to go above us or screen scrapping, we're just going to supply um the data. So we're kind of derisked in that aspect as well.

That's cool.

Yeah, that's really cool. So So you now have 60,000 vehicles on the platform, right? In New Zealand, you're looking at other markets, UK, Australia. Vehicle compliance is inherently localized and UK's MOT system is totally different from New Zealand's Wolf system. How do you take software product that's custom for New Zealand and scale it? Yeah.

Globally.

So I mean this is the thing that's been on my mind for the last year really. So our source here is that compliance is hard and people that don't know GPS use spread chains because there's just so many compliance requirements for a vehicle in New Zealand like three usually. But if it's a crane or anything else there's more certifications. Now the product has morphed into health and safety telematics and GPS going into New South Wales and Victoria. they don't have any SAS systems to kind of like help with compliance or telemetics or health and safety. So, it's kind of going to flip on its head in terms of value prop for them. It's going to be the ability to connect into vehicles with no barrier to entry for the OEM. In Australia, we're able to connect into a lot more brands than BYD and New Zealand, uh Tesla and Merc because they just are a bigger bigger country with more vehicles.

So, that's the aspect we're going with. Health and safety and then compliance. So, we've got three big pillars. It's just going to be reversed. Yeah. state byst state compliance changes and in uh country by country it changes. So that's definitely our biggest kind of like hurdle to just make sure the terminology is the same state by state. But in terms of the actual data, the government data to run on it to make it as like um automated as possible. All that data is there and it's cheaper than New Zealand. So that's great. Yeah.

Interesting. And where do you see yourself in you know 3, five, seven years? Like where do you see Bonnet? Well, car track in New Zealand is who would I say who I would say would be our biggest competitor.

Where do you see Bonnet at five to seven years? Where's Bonnet going to be?

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, our competitor, our competitor in New Zealand is like the one that's doing the best job is Carr. So, that's actually out of um South Africa. They've got really good customer service. Their product's pretty ugly, but the they do a good job. They do it a lot with AI. They're not SAS or anything like that, but it's the only kind of um it's the only fleet software we've lost to in the last like quarter and we just think that they're doing a great job. That um have been losing work to us though and they're worth $2.2 billion globally. So I feel like if we can nail it against them here and it's a bit of a fight at the moment I feel like between us, we can nail it offshore.

um my sell price about a year ago um was a lot lower than it is now and I feel like I just feel like with looking at all the competitors globally globally they've all got bees and I think our pivot to just focus on the B2B telematics amber fleet management is really the ticket here. If you would asked me five year uh sorry last year I would have said launch in um launch in Australia in California and then probably exit. It really just does depend on that AI aspect like speeding us up I feel like is what I'm I'm hoping that it's going to do. Um and car tracks in 22 countries. I'd hope that after Australia and our knowledge about going into there, we'll be able to just launch globally after that. Uh and being all all the countries instead of going slowly territory through territory.

AI will hopefully be able to make us global from after Australia essentially and then five to seven years hopefully exit. Yeah.

When you say exit, what does that mean?

We've had a few offers already actually and um the definitely the ones with the deepest pockets are um leasing companies like vehicle leasing companies and there's a few kind of on our radar that we've kept cons um and they're pretty big in um North America. Um and they basically so leasing companies essentially are um like financing the vehicles, but they also pay a pretty big premium to actually manage those vehicles for you. And at the moment, if you're with one of these leasing companies, it's a blind it's a blind relationship. You actually have no visual dashboard of what they're doing. And Bonnet would work it perfectly to be that visual dashboard. Um, and this is kind of where we were going with the company that we're speaking about. We were going to do a partnership with them, but then all the ruck news came out for petrols.

Um, and uh, everything just got really crazy and so we're just kind of still keeping coms there. But that's definitely where we've seen um, the most promising dollar or signs from. H you know we often talk about New Zealand founders kind of like selling out early

and not having a big enough vision

for themselves or the company. So, you know, and I don't know. I think it makes sense, right? Because maybe, you know, on a personal level, like I mean, like making 10 million versus 100 million kind of like doesn't really doesn't really matter, right? So, if 10 million comes along, you know, that's that's pretty significant. You take it, but do you feel like you could build a really big global company here that could be like an iconic company that eventually maybe goes public?

Yeah, I think we were when we were doing our raise last year, it was a lot of interesting conversation. And it's like what's a billion dollar idea? Especially with ice house. It's like what's a billion dollar idea, Steve? You know, and I'm like, oh yeah, licensing and road to charges and petrol and taxes and stuff like that. Like, right. But really, like what we've actually got with the fleets is really, really special. Our numbers are really great. And if you look at the international players here, they're just dinosaurs and they can't move in this market. Fio is an interesting one because Fleio I think they just did a raise for 100 million a couple years ago. Fleio is a bit different because it's maintenance-based. Whip round I don't know if you guys just saw the exit 2 days ago. Do you guys see Whip rounds exit?

Their fleet compliance New Zealand founded but based in um what's the state one of the states in America? They just sold for under 200 million. like that's probably a lower end, but if you just look at them in their valuations at the moment and how many vehicles that they manage, it's a really really big place to be in. And so that's the future that I see for Bonnet is just making it super easy, keeping the consumer side so we get a lot of that top of funnel. Um, and I do believe that it can absolutely be like a billion dollar valued company if we keep it easy for people to use and do the OEM connect. um having hardware. We've got hardware in a lot of our fleets because we did need to understand it um the sensor points and kind of do that for the older vehicles as well, but it's definitely not the future of what I see bonnet being.

We're definitely going to try and push the hardware free OM connect as much as we can and as fast as we can all the brands, but naturally you're going to have fleets that have got age stock that they just need the hardware for. But hardware on our balance sheet, I'm learning the hard way is just like not where we want to be and you know having to rely on stock orders and then things like that. It's just it's part of the business at the moment but it's not the future.

And is that I mean is that a vision you're excited about or do you feel like you know in a few years if somebody offers you 50 50 60 70 million?

I mean it depends on circumstances always like you know but that's definitely not what I'm aiming for. like all of the decisions um we're making in the company is like is this something that a billiond dollar company would do? Is this a product that's going to get us to 22 countries or are we focusing too much on the New Zealand market when we could really be trying to like launch into Australia because we're trying to get a sale for like 10 grand, right? So like there's a lot of that kind of going into my mind now. I don't want to just be in New Zealand at all. Like we've got a pretty good presence in New Zealand now, but you know you've they've only got 4 million cars here. There's one like California's got 40 million cars just in one state.

So I think it's just about making sure that all the decisions that we're making now and all the stuff on our road map is modeled for what that be is that billion dollar company rather than like the $10 million company in New Zealand.

Yeah,

makes sense. Um and kind of looking to the future, right? I mean, cars are basically computers on wheels. And in 10 years, will this whole like vehicle admin thing that we do as humans, will that will that even be a thing or will cars just automatically pay their own taxes, book their own services?

I mean, it's like you sign up to Bonnet when you buy the car or potentially Bonnet's the system that you kind of like do a vehicle trans transfer of ownership via and then Bonnet's the layer that you just like know is running in the background, but you don't really need to do anything with. If it's just the silent player for like automated compliance, you can log if you're a fleet, you can kind of log in to see where your vehicles have been and potentially do any like billing that should be automated too. Yeah, there will be a visual component to the fleets. But for consumers, it will be like um more of a process use to purchase and then kind of keep compliant and then everything's automated underneath that.

But you you've kind of heard this. I mean, and I'm sure you you're very well aware of this that most cars sit unused, right? 70 or 80% of the time. Kind of, you know, Elon's idea with these robo taxis that actually like you can

buy a car and then it goes and kind of like drives

Yeah.

like an automated Uber driver for you, makes you money. And in that in that kind of scenario, most people even own cars.

I like my car and I don't really want anyone else driving it. So, I mean, for some people, I wouldn't think that it would get more than 15% of the market in that model, though. Uh maybe in 10 years we don't really care as much about cars for some reason in that world potentially. Maybe. But there's just something about having a nice car that I think is quite nice. You know, I don't think people are going to get less vain in a way potentially. But I see what you're saying. Yeah. I I think there will be a certain amount of that, but I I think there will be always people buying their own cars. But then I guess in a in a 10 in a 10year world that's yeah what do the cities look like? If the roads are too busy there is a they need to do that and congestion charging's got to the point of like you're not allowed to drive on the road.

So maybe I don't know it just depends I guess on the help of the population.

Yeah. And I guess the yeah even if you have fleets of robo taxis driving around and somebody earns money owning them um they still need to be administered right and taxes still need to be paid road charges and all of that. So there's probably a future for that.

Yeah.

Great. I think we Yeah, we would love to wrap up on just a quick fire around if that's okay. Great. Um, you have a background in design and automotive. Which of those two skills was more critical in launching Bonnet?

Um, definitely design cuz it's all about that wild factor that got viral. Yeah.

What's a classic startup advice that you absolutely hate?

Co-founder maybe. But you have to have a co-founder maybe. I mean like I get it. I get it. But I mean I I don't agree.

Interesting. Wow. Yeah. So you're a soul founder. That's pretty cool.

Well, so this is again something I'm not sure you guys can decide. The reality of my founding journey was a lovely man that now invested in to us said, "You need a co-founder because you're not technical enough." I agree, but I also feel like I I didn't don't need that. I I agree with it in some sense, but but in some others I Yeah. I don't agree. I think it's about just being tenacious. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think I think I mean in today's world I mean I don't know if you've tried building stuff yourself with cloud code but I think if you have like I don't I don't think anyone ever really needs anyone technical anymore. Like you should kind of know how stuff works and then Yeah.

Yeah. Well it's easy enough to build stuff in code but then it's like once you've got a certain amount of stuff built how to not break everything else with your new code. Yeah.

Yeah. What's the most stressful day you've had in the company so far?

Oh, that's a good question. When I found out when I found out the NZTA was raising prices by 3,000%. That was quite stressful. That was really stressful. I thought we had no company. That was Yeah, that would definitely be the most stressful day. Everything else I just find kind of fun in a way. Like when we've got fires to put out, it's just like all hands on deck. It's stressful at the time, but then, you know, once you see everyone rally and put out a fire, it's Yeah, it's quite cool.

Enjoyed it. Yeah. Great. And um what's your favorite car brand?

Jeep 100%. I love Jeep.

Love to hear that. I just got a Jeep as well.

Did you? What kind of Jeep?

Uh small one. The Renegade, I think. Is it?

Yeah. Thank you so much. This was good.

Yes, Steph. It's been an incredible kind of master class of watching you, you know, find a real world problem and then just executing ruthlessly to to solve it and pivoting whenever things change. Right. So for all the Yeah. fleet managers out there and the forgetful drivers got to get bonnet and use it.

Cool. Awesome guys. Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining us.

All the best.

Thank you for tuning in to Techmates. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with friends. We'll be back soon with more stories of Kiwi and Aussie founders reshaping the future and disrupting Down Under. Until next time, keep dreaming big and daring to disrupt.