Meet OnTruck Co-founder and CEO Iñigo Juantegui

We recently took a few minutes to ask Iñigo Juantegui, CEO and co-founder of our latest investment OnTruck, a few questions about his founder journey, and what he sees as the most important qualities in entrepreneurship…

For our readers who may not be familiar, who are you?

I was born in Pamplona in 1985, and since I was young I understood that I wanted to create new things. I studied Business at CUNEF, a Madrid University, and spent my last year of studies in Lisbon where I fell in love with the city, the amazing weather, incredible atmosphere, surf and super friendly people (and the similarity between Spanish and Portuguese made things easier!). When I finished University I started working as a strategy consultant with PwC in Madrid, where I had the chance to learn a lot about management, business plans and many other useful tools, although I also realized that perhaps it wasn’t the right choice for me long-term… At PwC I met José [del Barrio], and after 2.5 years there we decided to quit and build La Nevera Roja, an online food delivery marketplace that we developed from 2011 to 2015, when we sold it to Rocket Internet for 80M€. After the sale I got married and had my first child (Pablo), and 1 year later I met Antonio Lu, who introduced me to the trucking industry and its many problems. After undertaking a consultant-like analysis of the market we decided to start the company in January 2016, when we on boarded Gonzalo Parejo Navas, Samuel Fuentes and Javier Escribano (the 3 other co-founders). And here we are.

What are your three greatest skills as a founder?

I’m not usually a fan of talking about my ‘skills’, but if I had to list them I’d say that I’m a hard worker, transparent and easy going.

What are the three most important things a founder should interrogate / fix in their business?

Firstly, create a great team from the outset. I once read that a CEO has to do 3 things: Bring the best talent, acquire the most needed resources, and repeat their vision tirelessly. I totally agree! First thing, get the best team possible, second make sure you have the resources you need to get you to where you need to be (or that you know how to get them) and third, focus: make sure that you have only one target, and that the whole team knows it, believes in it and keeps it in mind.

Give us your best recent example of a practical fix that you’ve seen deliver bottom-line business transformation

At the beginning of 2016, we wanted to launch OnTruck within 3 months with the goal of making the first shipment the first week of April that same year. Quite soon, in February, we realized that we could not achieve our target if we had to build the website, the backend, the Android app and iOS app. We didn’t know how to solve this issue, so we shared it with the team. One day, Marc from our Product department came up with an idea: why don’t we use Telegram groups to send the shipment details to our carriers? We discovered that this meant that we could save 35% of the software development resources, allowing us to meet our shipping target, so we started with Telegram… and it worked amazingly well, actually so well that we didn’t change to our own app until September 2016. Obviously we hit our deadline, and started operations on April 4th.

Who do you think is killing it right now?

I have to say that Amazon is to me the most innovative and fast-developing company. It’s amazing how, despite their scale and size, they are able to launch new products and services so quickly. I have the feeling that every startup is competing with Amazon in some way! That said, I am still confident that if we end up competing, we will win the fight!

What are the biggest problems founders have in 2017?

The biggest problems for founders, no matter which era they live in, is managing themselves. Most of the biggest failures I know in the startup world come from fights between founders and partners. Even today, no one has found a solution to that problem!

Make a prediction — by the end of 2017…WHAT?

We will see self-driving trucks on European highways. Well, this is more a wish than a feasible prediction but don’t blame me for dreaming!

Thanks Inigo!