Launching Summon (coming out of ‘shy mode’)

Launching Summon (coming out of ‘shy mode’)

For the past year, Tim Fouhy and I have been working in stealth mode on a new start-up, which today we’re pleased to pull the covers off. Tim and I are not particularly stealthy, and so maybe ‘shy mode’ is more accurate - we have been open to the public for a while - but today is the first time we are sharing with our friends, family, colleagues and community what we’re up to.

Our new business is called Summon, and our goal is to provide Aussie’s a better and fairer way to sell their cars.

The problem we are trying to solve is easily explained. Imagine you wanted to sell your car. Today you basically have two choices; either you sell your car privately (what a time-consuming hassle), or you sell the car to a dealer (and you get an unfair price). 

We have created a third choice, which marries the convenience of selling to a dealer with the value of selling privately. We call it Summon.

Why “Summon”? When ideating brands, we wanted the name to speak to; customer service, automotive, future tech / artificial intelligence, plus sound “start-upy” + D2C. We think Summon sounds sensible, spellable and suitable for some alliteration.

Our launch product from Summon is a full concierge service to sell prestige cars privately on behalf of their owners. We do all of the work for our customer (the seller), including professional photography, advertising, handling enquiries, conducting test-drives through to negotiation and settlement. Basically, we do all the work for the customer, and sell their car for a great price (typically 10% - 20% more than a trade-in price, before our fees).

Over time we plan to introduce new services and products that benefit anyone who wants to sell a car, of any value. But for now, we’re focused on the prestige car market.

We started with a “front-door test” in December last year, followed by an MVP with the goal of getting 10 customers signed-up and cars sold. We recruited a team of amazing concierges who do all the logistics (“car stuff”) on our behalf. Initially the plan was to focus on Melbourne, but when Melbourne went into lock-down we moved quickly to start in Sydney and Queensland.

In July this year we incorporated the company and started to quietly grow the business, but with still a lot to figure out and some regulatory questions to answer. 

This month we have finally navigated the regulations, are running smoothly in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast, and this week we hired our first full-time staff member, Gavin Little, as GM of Operations. We’re now officially ready to scale!

On reflection, there are many similarities with Summon to our experience running Reactive (the digital agency Tim F and I started, ran and eventually sold);

  1. We are using our digital marketing, eCommerce and conversion optimisation experience to find and win new customers for Summon
  2. We are trying to design the best possible customer experience (this is working so far, our customers love the service and give us rave reviews and referrals)
  3. We are using our digital marketing experience to advertise the customer cars we are helping to sell (every car gets a “mini digital campaign”)
  4. The concierge service runs like an agency - we hire great people to provide a service of value to our customers, we provide systems and processes to ensure quality outcomes
  5. We are using our technology knowledge (and Tim’s dev skills) to build and integrate systems and software for our internal use, and also for marketing automation
  6. We are building the business from the ground-up to operate without Tim and I being in the weeds - delegating and hiring quickly to ensure we can work on the business, not in it.

What is exciting to me is that even though we’ve made great progress so far, for each of these areas I feel like we are just getting started. What we have now is a polished MVP, with so much more potential. We are learning every day, which after all was our motivation for starting a new business together. That, and I love nice cars :)

How can you help? Thanks for asking! We are recruiting for concierge’s in each city, and also looking for advisors with experience in developing and scaling a people-oriented process to be highly repeatable. We are also seeking partnerships with complimentary businesses (e.g. car finance providers). And of course, if you know someone wanting to sell their prestige car, please share Summon with them!

I can’t think of a better use of my time than working with my best friend, on a challenging problem that many people face, with a product I love (cars) and for a purpose I feel strongly about. 2021 should be fun.

www.summon.com.au






Tim Evans

Managing Director / Founder @ 2045

3y

👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

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Fiona Triaca

Co-Founder and CPO @ Heatseeker

3y

Congrats on the launch Tim!! Very exciting times.

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Carl Panczak

General Manager - Digital @ Versent | Design, Technology, Transformation | Entrepreneur

3y

Great to see this in the wild Tim and Tim. Congratulations on the official launch! You’re onto a good one here for sure, inspiring to see. 

Ah hah! I've been expecting an announcement like this, awesome, Tims. Putting your feet up long term never looked that likey 😉 Congrats on combining talent and passion once again to make something useful and beautiful.

Amit Bansal

Managing Director | Artificial Intelligence | Data | Digital Leader | AI-led Reinvention | MAICD

3y

Congrats Tim

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