I envisioned a software platform to turn telemetry data into actionable indicators to improve operational cost efficiency in large vehicle fleets. It could have been a billion-dollar company, but thankfully it did not completely fail.

Background

Before Ai turned into the current tech wildcard, Big Data was the buzzword for magical software. The problem with Big Data was that it actually required someone intelligent to analyze it and come up with good insights on actual behavior that influenced the data. I became aware of some of these patterns on the transportation industry and decided to go big on the data.

Since 2010 I had been selling consultancy services for hardware engineering. It was going well but local market quickly changed and I found myself having no short term visibility on projects I could close. I was working basically alone and I committed the mistake of selling all the hours I could. Suddenly I realized I had no prospects and my contact network had run dry.

I dreaded having to do any business development. I was not a salesperson, but I had devised a plan of cold calling some companies I found online listing engineering jobs. I thought that if I offered my services I could maybe land smaller gigs to help with their urgent needs and test the waters. I was impressed when my first two calls actually worked. One of these calls would eventually put me in contact with people that had just acquired a company providing security services. We would start a partnership to revolutionize the market (play grandiose documentary music here).

It seems I’ve lost my email history from a previous account, but it all points to this product being conceived during the year of 2012. I began working on a firmware for a GPS tracking device and an online monitoring platform designed for the container transportation market. I did not charge for the project itself. I decided I had to stop selling hours and start working on products with a longer lifespan. I would earn based on a licensing model. Technically, it was working well. Financially… let’s just say It was a lot of work for what I got paid. I fell for projections that until this date.. I have yet to reach.

The billion-dollar idea

During the development, I got in contact with people in the transportation industry. I came to understand that the two major costs of transportation are fuel and tires. In fact, the cost of buying a truck is somewhat small compared to the amount of money that goes into transporting goods throughout a year and still making a profit. And if the operation happened in certain underdeveloped countries, well.. the profit would literally go out the window because of things like stolen diesel and damaged tires.

The idea was to use cheap chinese devices collect telemetry data into a platform that could generate insights into several problems found in the industry. Fuel stealing, monitoring tire conditions, detecting trucks that were underperforming, drivers that behaved poorly etc. I wanted to come up with a score system, that help the client make adjustments and take actions. The business argument was that clients would recoup any investment made by saving operational cost.

I decided to pitch the idea to my newfound partners, and we decided to reuse my product to offer real time asset monitoring. It was not as much of a pivot as it was creating a new company using a similar product. I was investing in the tech while they would work to sell it to the market. I obviously committed another mistake here.

Implementation

The first product version was called Platoon. It was very security oriented and I liked the movie. But I realized I had to make several changes and soon enough I came up with a similar name variant called Plamoon (Online Monitoring Platform). I basically had to redo the entire thing to accomplish what I wanted.

I had researched some chinese products online and their documentation, protocol and features were a mess. It was quite hard to convince them to do any personalization without a sizable order (which we did not have use for, or money to buy). And I also did not want to give too much information about our goals. I chose some models, imported samples and began working on a Frankenstein’s creature.

I basically did a reverse engineering of some of the hardware and wrote a new firmware for the main communication device. We would then use different sensors spread across the vehicle to gather telemetry data such as tire pressure and temperature, fuel tank levels, OBD-II and engine indicators and so on. All of this data would be sent to the platform. Reports would be extracted presenting insights into the operation.

The hardware choice was due to the fact that this product aimed at problematic markets. The idea was to make the hardware as cheap as possible. The hardware did not matter, and it should not have been a blocking factor to implement on a new fleet. Investing money to save money could look a little counterproductive to some industry leaders. In fact, it did.

The online platform was rewritten employing Java EE tech, all server side and using relational databases. It was a beautiful monolith. For the standards of that time.. it had a nice interface and was well organized. I was using Bootstrap 3.x at the time. Funny enough, some years ago a person complained about the interface saying it was too engineer minded and needed more color.

I don’t recall knowing any product that did what ours did at that time. Presenting all of this info in real time and being consolidated in one single place. I remember that some people were really impressed by the outcome. I was happy with the whole package, but I constantly had the feeling our indicators were bulshit. I remember spending hours tweaking our score algorithms to come up with “industry and common sense based” metrics. The truth is that I did not have enough data to test it at that time.

Unfortunately, I could not find any screenshots to share, but there is a link bellow to the current docs.

Turning it into a billion dollars

It was mid 2014 and while I had a prototype of my product, my partners were struggling to find early adopters. Still, we managed to test the product on a few vehicles of transportation companies we were trying to sell to.

After collecting some data, our indicators partially matched the behavior in the field, but soon I realized that it would take a little more time to fine tune our indicators. Still, the platform had its merits just by monitoring in real time the vehicle conditions. I had implemented a flexible rule system to generate alerts that could be fully customized. This was more inline with what the market was already used to with tracking systems.

I did not know at the time, but there was a startup being born in the USA. Uptake was basically doing the same but with a lot more resources. They were initially aiming at heavy industrial machinery. I don’t know much about their product, but their business strategy was way better than ours.

I was quite impressed when Caterpillar invested in it and the company value skyrocketed. It felt both depressing by knowing they were having success with a similar product and somewhat reassuring by confirming this was a very good product and market, and that I was not a complete idiot.

I don’t have to say that it never got valued even close to a million-dollar company. The product had its merits but the business flopped belly-first hard.

Shortcomings

We were too early with too little capital. Being early means you have to open a whole new market. This requires money to invest and time to convince the industry of effectiveness.

The market obviously wanted validation. Potential clients wanted some sort of assurance that our metrics would deliver on the investment. That it would actually decrease operational cost and save money. Without investment, they would not buy into it, and we would not have the necessary business case to sell it. Typical chicken-and-egg kind of problem.

There was also a mindset problem. Clients recognized it as a tracking platform instead of an intelligence platform. We tried identifying key industry people, but they often downplayed the ideas. I have many theories on this, none of then are flattering. No offense, but the transportation market was very narrow-minded.

We chose the wrong market niche and the wrong approach. Uptake was an excellent example of that. They secured the right kind of partnerships and chose a more suitable niche. Obviously all around more qualified than we were.

After we realized that selling would be hard, we looked for investors. That initiative also did not pan out.

I remember participating in a meeting with Banco Vipal, a local Brazilian family owned bank in the tire business. I don’t remember exactly how we landed the meeting but It was a surreal experience. We flew there somewhat rushed. They invited my partner and I to get into the room. The board members were already there sitting at a round table (they did not even introduce themselves), my partner said a few words and I demonstrated the system in about 10 min. They did not ask any questions. They never even looked at us. They simply remained in silence and soon enough someone thanked us and we never heard back.

We also demonstrated the platform to a few potential buyers. Michelin for example liked it so much they decided to try to make it themselves. Last time I heard they had invested money on a product that is not performing.

After a while the business just ran its course. It died prematurely. My partners started getting some traction with the container business and I simply emphasized other features of my product. It is still making me money, not just on what I thought it would be the main market.

The product has been going for about 10 years now. I’m really impressed it lasted so long. I almost abandoned the product while working on another business during 2016-2019. Even though I don’t put any business effort, it still generates new sales. Because it is well organized and flexible enough, I often come up with a quick way of solving logistics problems using the platform for a potential project.

If you are interested, there’s an online documentation. I’m still completing it and is in portuguese because of my customer base. Don’t look at the website though, I made it as a placeholder and I have no intention of working on it.

Lessons

Keep in mind these were really early lessons of my business career.

  • Don’t follow the white rabbit: Inflated projections, exaggerated opportunities, people appealing to your good will are all white rabbits. If someone is not willing to put their money on it, why should you put your time and effort?

  • Trust your gut: I had many gut sensations that I did not follow through. I should have used these insights to chose better partners and people all around. For example, I had gut feelings about the qualification of those around me, and I don’t mean academic qualifications, I mean potential related. Lack of imagination is a red flag. Bad choices made me often have to spend a lot of energy helping people see product capabilities.

  • Take ownership: I left too many things to be handled by other people that had conflicting interests. For example, my lack of enthusiasm with marketing and business related tasks led me to relinquish these tasks completely. At the time I was very limited in my understanding of businesses, but that was no excuse. I should have been more active. It would have meant spending less time on the technical side of things. A good product without sales equates to an unknown tool. A good product with good sales turns into a solid business. It’s funny, I avoided some tasks but in the end I would have to do it anyway because of point above.

Thanks for reading.