Unlocking Innovation in the Automotive Industry: An Exclusive Interview with VisionAST Founder Peter Carusone

I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Carusone a 25-year automotive industry veteran and founder of data analytics SaaS platform VIsionAST. Carusone and his team of developers built the platform during his tenure as operations director for a dealer group in upstate New York where his wife and 4 daughters still call home.

What motivated you to launch your startup?

I’ve always been of the mind set of “there has to be an easier way.” I know that makes me sound lazy but the mentality of doing something because it’s the way we’ve always done it is a major impediment to innovation. In our case — extracting data from a dealer’s DMS software was extremely cumbersome and kept us from realizing the full potential of our data in terms of tracking performance, training and team building.

What is it that excites you about what you’re building?

The results we get for our clients. We look at their lift in profitability 90 days after onboarding and show our impact immediately — it’s very gratifying to help the industry prosper.

What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?

Setting the pace every day. I have a retail automotive background. Customers walked in the door or submitted leads online. Everyday was an event. The pace of B2B sales is much different but our success depends on maximizing every day not only in sales, but in product development, customer support training and marketing. I’m patient with people not not with processes.

What are your future plans for your startup?

Ultimately we will be the gold standard in data and analytics. We will power other providers’ reporting as well as be a resource for the data we aggregate for business and industry that benefit from automotive trends and forecasts.

If you had to share, “words of wisdom,” with a Founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?

Make sure you have passion for what you are building as well as the cause you are serving. There will be many off ramps that you’ll be tempted to take because the work seems too hard. It’s the passion that will help you to persevere.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-carusone-8b772912/

https://www.facebook.com/visionast

This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!