#236: Joel Milne, CEO of RepairSmith, the First and Only Full-Service Mobile Delivery Solution for Car Repair and Maintenance

Joel is a serial technology entrepreneur, with a love for building consumer-facing products. Joel previously co/founded four venture-backed technology startups and brings a lifetime of experience building and operating technology companies to RepairSmith.

As a technical founder, Joel has served as CEO, COO, and CTO for his previous companies, having raised over $100M in venture financing and scaled multiple businesses nationally.

Joel began programming at age 10, started college at 16, and founded his first technology company upon graduating at 21. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Queen’s University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Joel is a member of the Forbes Business Council and named Executive Hero of the Year for Effective Leadership During COVID-19 by the Consumer World Awards. He is also an angel investor, advisor to numerous startups and active in the Southern California startup community. Joel has been featured on Forbes, Fox Los Angeles, ABC Los Angeles, CBS Los Angeles, KIIS-FM, and more. Joel is passionate about the NBA champion Raptors and super convenient car repair.

About Our Partner

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor WeAreNoCode.

WeAreNoCode’s mission is to empower non-technical founders. The problem is that if you don’t know how to code, building your MVP or app idea is a frustrating process:

• Developers are expensive

• Looking for a perfect tech co-founder is time-consuming

• And learning how to code takes 3 years

Their program is called, “The No-Code Startup” and it’s a no-code accelerator program that teaches founders how to build, launch and monetize their startup without hiring expensive developers or waiting for a technical co-founder.

No-code is a disruptive new way of building software products that allows users to drag and drop functionalities to build powerful solutions like Uber, Airbnb, Twitter and much more.

They have founders in over 12 countries and partnerships with organizations like UCLA Accelerator, Startup Boost and Scale Health.

If you want to learn more or find out if no-code is a good fit for your startup, visit them at www.wearenocode.com/justgogrind

Some of the Topics Covered by Joel Milne in this Episode

• What RepairSmith does and why Joel joined

• The massive impact RepairSmith can have

• What Joel was thinking about working on while he had time off between companies

• Why Joel decided to kill off a dating app he developed

• The first things he did after starting RepairSmith

• How Joel went about building his team and defining the culture at RepairSmith

• Mastery, autonomy, and purpose

• Expanding into new markets and the decision process behind it

• Why RepairSmith is not a marketplace

• Why there hasn't been much innovation in this space so far

• The logistics behind executing RepairSmith's business model

• The actual experience of using RepairSmith as a customer

• Joel's previous experience fundraising and his advice around raising capital

• How Joel has seen the LA tech scene evolve since 2009

• How RepairSmith has responded to the global pandemic and why they donated $100,000 in free car repair

• Some of Joel's favorite books

• How Joel manages his time day-to-day and why he wakes up early now

• What Joel does to recharge

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