Hustle Awards 2025 Special: ONO, Winner of Most Innovative Tech

0:00Welcome back to the serial entrepreneur. I'm your host Anna Wood. In today's episode, I'm joined by Renee Rogers, the founder and CEO of Ono. We discuss incident reporting and the intricacies of fleet management, knowing when to take or leave advice, and winning the Most Innovative Tech Award at the Hustle Awards 2025. Let's dig in. Hi Renee, welcome to the podcast today. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on. So we begin every podcast episode with the same icebreaker question, which is what's your favourite breakfast cereal and why? Okay, so my favourite has to be Cocoa Pops, because I've still got that kind of childhood joy of watching that milk go from white to chocolate and getting my sugar fix first thing in the morning.

0:54So yeah, Cocoa Pops, without a doubt. honestly any kind of chocolatey cereal for me it's all the way you've got to have that chocolatey milk at the end you really do you really do and it feel I feel like I've had something relatively substantial because I mean granola is just not going to cut it for me I get what you mean so would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background absolutely I am Renee Rogers and I'm the CEO and founder of Oh No Oh, yes, I do spend my whole life saying, oh, no, on a regular basis to everybody. And I actually started my career many years ago aiming to be a teacher.

1:39So I wanted to teach school age into college age, classical theatre, contemporary theatre. And whilst I was learning, I actually went into the wedding industry and realised immediately I love this. lots of dresses sparkle fashion tiaras yes I would prance around the store on a quiet Monday dressed up and I then moved to London after 10 years of that and realized I needed something a bit more substantial because London was extremely expensive to live in and ended up getting a part-time job in a fleet company who had 40 cars at the time and I walked in I had no idea how to deal with vehicles and ended up doubling that fleet within six months and building it to 500 cars over 10 years so from wonderful dresses and sparkle to jump starting five Priuses at one go in trainers and a hoodie very different yeah that's a very varied career kind of wanting to do teaching and going into wedding stuff and then to fleet management that's very fair so you're the founder of Ono.

2:47So what is Ono and what are you trying to achieve? So Ono is an incident reporting app for drivers. So when a driver's had an incident, it's extremely stressful. It's a very, it's a moment that we never want as a driver. And there's so much information to collect and gather and so many different people to navigate during that. And when we're a normal everyday day driver, it's quite rare that we have an incident, probably on average around one in every seven years. However, for commercial drivers, this can be sometimes on average, nearly one a year for them because the sheer volume that they're driving.

3:27So Ono is that tool that helps lead a driver through everything they need to collect to the roadside, especially commercial drivers. And then it bundles that data up and it sends it straight through to who needs to know, such as their fleet manager, their operator, or they can also share it with their insurance as well. Okay, interesting. So what was the inspiration behind the founding of the company? So those 500 vehicles I was looking after over 10 years were costing me about a million pounds a year in insurance and not just insurance in claims costs, repair bills, unwarranted excesses on my premium.

4:07And I'm very process driven. And I had looked at every different element of the business and I'd been able to implement a process and make it as efficient as possible. The insurance side and gathering that incident data was the one bit that I was really struggling with. And I couldn't find anything on the market to actually pay for and pay for a SaaS product, bring it in, give it to my drivers. And I realised that the biggest problem was my drivers were predominantly non English speaking and really panicked when they had an incident. And they wouldn't give me the right information, sometimes two, three weeks later, because they were they were so worried they were going to lose their job or they would be economically impacted.

4:52So I thought we have to solve that problem first. And that's how I thought, right, an app. Let's first of all, start with an app help lead the driver through everything they need to collect and then that will help solve my next ongoing issues with managing the claims dealing with the repairs and actually trying to get a good grip on my premium amazing so is the app in multiple languages then so not currently we've got um the underpinning for that we've just launched it in french which is great um because we also want to go to canada so it's really important that we have french for canada and we're actually looking at Spanish and Cypriot.

5:34So we're targeting those countries that we've got interest in, we can then implement the languages. And for us, it takes about six weeks to implement a new language. So it doesn't take long at all. We've built it ready to go for that. Oh, yeah, that is amazing. Six weeks is a very fast kind of turnaround time. It's like a plug-in. And you just, the tricky thing is actually go and translating it into French. When I first translated it into French, because we've obviously got Google Translate and there's AI Translate that we can utilise. And then I gave it to a Frenchman to have a look at. And he was like, almost like, sacrible, no, this is not real French, Renee.

6:17This is not how we speak. This is not. And it was really interesting to have that feedback because I'm so reliant on technology to just, oh, OK, that's a straight translation. I wanted to make sure it was right and still comforting for those that speak French. And he's helped me actually make sure the language is conversational and relative to the French rather than just a straight translation. So, yeah, it's been that's been a bit of a learning curve, actually, the translations. yeah I could imagine because you you do want to get it right and you don't because obviously all languages are kind of like slightly different in the way they structure sentences and everything like that yeah yeah yeah so do you have any competitors in the market and if so what do you think makes Ono stand out so we there are apps out there that you can report your incident on and I looked at those at the beginning but when you're managing a fleet I had 500 vehicles I knew where I wanted my repairs to go I knew which claims companies I wanted my and I wanted my drivers to go to what the problems were was that these apps would gather that data and then want you to utilize their own repair network their own insurance provider or their own claims team because that's where some of the supplementary income can come from in regards to claims.

7:39And I didn't want that. I wanted to be in control of that data as the operator and asset owner. So when you look at some of the apps that are out there now, our competitors may have the ability to report an incident, but nobody's in control of that data. And it's extremely important with Ono that the driver is in control of that data because even a retail driver, we may ensure with Admiral today, have an incident and then three months later change our policy and go to churchill that data then all if it's gone straight to your insurer is sucked into that void i wanted to put the power back in drivers hands and we we come at a no blame we do not make money from incidents we do not profiteer from incidents we are a um that's one of our core values as a company that we are purely data and fleet operator focused putting that data back in your hands and giving you control and empowerment over what you want to use and how you want to deal with that incident yourselves so that's our difference yeah yeah that's amazing so you kind of said about how you don't make money from incidents and that was something built into kind of like the cause of your company what would you say are your other missions as a company road safety is huge for me and when you look at globally the equivalent to something like one jumbo jet of people die a day every working day through road traffic accidents in the world one jumbo jet now when we look at any air accidents that happen the whole world stops for a moment the air india disaster that was everywhere we are having that equivalent every single day on a weekday through people dying through road traffic accidents that's something that i'm very passionate about and we want to make sure that people are more aware about incident hotspots, road safety, less distractions on the road.

9:40And I do a lot of campaign in my end, but going in with definitely promoting lots of the road safety campaigns, such as Project Edward and dealing with some police forces and those that have been dealing with traffic accidents in their careers for many years to try and just establish better driving behaviour. So that's what I'm really passionate about especially the young driver market and the learner drivers and by helping them establish better driving patterns and behavior from the beginning hopefully will cause less incidents going forward yeah I never knew just how of course I know road traffic accidents about I didn't know just how many people actually passed from them on a daily basis on a daily basis for in the UK a day and some people say it doesn't sound a lot but for that's four families impacted there could be hundreds of people impacted by that or and a lot of it is down to driver behavior incidents that could really not not have to happen so and what we what we find is um when you look at the bigger incidents and the collisions that happen they're all reported so there's something called stats 19 where the police cover that data and we have we have lots of incident data on big collisions where these have happened and personal injuries those collisions that have caused personal injury or death we don't have a lot of data on the tiny little minor incidents and that's the data we collect so we can see very quickly that a fleet of 500 drivers maybe bumping just slight minor collisions and a roundabout but ultimately let's look at that within that area and let's see if we can change the road road signs or the speed in that small area just to stop these minor collisions that one day could become a major collision so we're gathering a lot of that data which is going to be really useful yeah I was going to ask is there anything that you wanted to kind of do with this data and because obviously there must be so much of it especially building up over time there'll be so much of it with the kind of smaller collisions in different places absolutely and i deal with like i said lots of the different road safety campaign and charities and a company called driving for better business that are linked with national highways and also arm which is the association of road risk management and they look at this data and they constantly strive to help fleet operators behave better, manage their fleets better.

12:17And there are so many fantastic operators and companies out there that take this data and actually utilise it to minimise risk within their fleet. So I'm really lucky to be working with lots of different organisations like that and say, I've got this data, let's have a look at it. It's yours to check out and let's try and help these fleets mitigate risk better. I always say I want to be the app that nobody has to use, ultimately yeah that's a too far that's a good mission to to like want to help really minimize what you're actually kind of doing yeah exactly that and and you know we have got a great food and beverage company and their incident ratio is we're talking zero incidents very very good company and they have it for all of their staff every single staff member even if in their own private cars because the owner of that company wanted their staff to feel supported within a stressful situation so even though they've never reported an incident they were one of my first fleets that came on board they love having it there as that well-being tool just in case so it's been good I've I've enjoyed those moments to be there as a helping hand yeah amazing So moving on, you won the most innovative tech at the Hustle Awards this year.

13:44So congratulations on that. How did that make you feel and what does that mean for the company? It's, you know, it's a hard slog being an entrepreneur and every day is fantastic. And you can have a great morning and then it can be a rubbish afternoon. And it's this wonderful roller coaster of emotion. And I think you always think you can do better without a doubt. And every day I'm striving to do better and make changes and be better and build the company more. So to have those moments where you're recognised for what you've achieved to date actually makes you take a breath and say, well done for where you've come to at this moment in time.

14:27and I need those and the company needs those because we're constantly driving forward forward forward so it was great that night to just afterwards I sat um in the air and just sat down I was like wow first of all it's a beautiful award I mean pink crown yes thanks like wonderful and I just thought do you know what well done Renee you've done this on a very minimal budget you've bootstrapped you've got a great team and it's a lovely bit of recognition so thank you for that because it is a hustle believe you me yeah you're very well deserved and of course I think I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs where they say how winning awards whether it's obviously the hustle awards or other awards and kind of getting recognition they don't realize how much of just looking forward they do there's barely any kind of like looking back at what you've done they may have achieved some really huge milestones like funding rounds also just launching products everything like this and then as soon as they win something they're like oh yeah I can kind of like take a take a second be like oh wow yeah that is all I've done in the past like only two years because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are constantly looking forward and don't take that time to really appreciate what they've done because it is hard work it's really hard work and we had very early on I I love a I love a CRM I love a spreadsheet so um we use the CRM system and I put this board on there it's wins of the week because I wanted us to just appreciate these little wins of the week and then you go three months and realize we've had loads of wins we've not we've not put them down because we've been so busy that we haven't actually noticed that they have been little wins so we really make sure now that we do have those moments to congratulate and just take a breath only you're only allowed 10 minutes and then you move straight on no time for dilly-dallying yeah of course so kind of discussing on the same kind of path as that what would you say have been some of the biggest challenges on the journey so far challenges wise so this is the first time I've ever built a business where I've had to need funding for it.

16:48So I've always been in companies where give me a pound, I'll make you two. Start with 40 cars, we'll double it organically, build and the revenue has helped grow the business. For software, I started with only my own budget, a single parent living with my daughter. And it was something I really wanted to do. So instead of I was saving to buy a house. And instead of doing that, I now have an app. Yay. Do not regret it at all. But it was really, really challenging pitching at the beginning, especially some of my first pitches to investors where it was a vision. It was actually just a deck. And you're having to sell the most amazing ticket to the most amazing show and you haven't picked out your cash yet.

17:36It's really, really interesting. And I found that a challenge because I'm all about stats and data and fact. And this was prediction. And so that was a challenge. fast forward a year my second round was much easier to raise because I'd almost proven what I was saying in the beginning and now we're about to do an even bigger raise and I'm finding that challenge is now becoming an exciting a really exciting moment rather than a challenge so ask me in a year how that's gone again but um it's so much easier now because I was doing I learned everything about shares and options and my cap table I had no knowledge about that two and a half years ago I've had to learn on the job so to speak so yeah now I feel a lot more educated in those areas still a lot of learning to do but I feel at least a little 10 % more than I know that I know more than I did a couple of years ago yeah I think those kind of things no one really talks about those things I think a lot of people just assume everyone knows how to do them and I think a lot of founders go into it and go oh I don't actually know how to do any of this so it is a huge learning curve for most people I think yeah no it's exactly that and it's I always ask advice I always do but then you do sometimes find you get conflicting advice you get somebody that would do it one way another person that would do it another so it's it was definitely about listening and then making a considered decision ultimately a little bit about from my gut really so yeah it's it's really interesting I really wish we learned more about this in schools I really do from the off because some of the I know it's a bit of a deviated topic but I think we have some brilliant opportunities now for kids to come out of schools and become entrepreneurs because then they're not actually happy with the schooling system and what they're learning they're much more practical I think if we just learn a bit more later stages of schools we're just building them up with a little bit more confidence yeah I think um kind of talking about the school is a a lot of people go to school and it's never an option it's never presented as an option it's kind of like if someone does say, oh, I want to start a business, I want to do this.

20:06They're like, maybe like, find something else to do. Or like, train in something else, because then at least you'll have that as a backup. And I think, I think it's slowly changing. And I do think there's more resources out there for young people who want to start businesses. But I think the, I think attitudes really need to change that for ages it was oh being a business owner being a founder is not a viable option for a lot of people so people who do it I think there is a view of founders it's like wow they're kind of crazy that they just do that and it's like well a little bit yes but I think it was kind of like drilled into people for ages like well it's just really unsafe to do that it's not the right way but I think there's ways around it that you can make it very sustainable for yourself absolutely and what better time that you're living with your mum and your dad you've not got rent to pay you've not got a family to support we we are you're right we are actually discouraging in schools children to go on and be entrepreneurs whereas this is one of the best times of their life that they can actually fail fast not be embarrassed about failing because they're young and they're not expected to know it all and actually get out there because you've not got a mortgage you've not got children to worry about it's so yeah there should be a lot more positivity and encouragement around entrepreneurship from a young age because it also makes them fantastic workers because even if they've tried it for a year or two and it's just not for them they then really appreciate a place of work where they're getting a daily wage and like oh entrepreneurship's not for me yeah exactly so kind of on the other side of my last question is what would you say has been some of the biggest highlights since you founded Ono?

21:59The support I've received without a doubt I you're always told it's such a lonely experience being an entrepreneur and it can be it really can be but I've really made sure that I've utilized certain networks I keep in touch with lots of people I take lots of advice I'm always asking questions and the support that I've received from really people that I don't even know that have popped into my inbox on LinkedIn and emails and come to me at shows and say, Renee, we've just come to see you to say well done. And even down to showing a couple of really big companies that I really admire my product and them saying, this is great, Renee.

22:46oh my gosh like thanks like little old me and I think that's what I've enjoyed most the yeah the support from others and it has been fantastic it does I always say it does take a village to build a business well that is amazing so we also lightly mentioned about how through your funding journey you learned more about kind of that entire process what would you say are some of the other lessons that you've learned to have found in your business listen to everything from people but you don't necessarily have to action everything from people and I'm a mum and I kind of set that advice for myself very when I had my my daughter because boy when you're a new parent does everyone tell you how you should be parenting and I thought okay they just want to share they want to share their experience so I just made sure I took all the advice and then parked what I didn't want and then I really took that into building my own business because everybody does have their own advice and it may have worked brilliantly for them but sometimes your situation is a little bit different and also not being obstinate as well because look we all I'm I'm strong-headed I know what I want I have my vision I've got my this is what we're going to achieve and it can be a little bit sometimes initially you can get your back up or you can feel offended by what other people are saying and if I allow myself to have that moment and actually think okay hold on but what do they mean rather than putting myself into offensive mode and I know best give it 24 hours 48 hours I then really start to understand why they came to me with that And so, yeah, just being aware, listening, learning.

24:35And if you really don't like the advice, bin it. Thanks, but no thanks.

24:47Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's you running your business. And sometimes you also sometimes you just can't take everyone's advice. Like you said, you can get so much conflicting advice about the same thing that it's like you can't take. both you've kind of got to pick pick a path and hope for the best yeah absolutely and I think that actually translated into when I was building the software the first three months of having the first product out on the market almost our MVP everyone would have suggestions into oh we'd love this we'd love that and so then I would be in a pleaser I'd be like oh we need to build that we need to build that and I I look now and I had like a 300 piece list of future bits on the software but then one day I thought well this is absolutely ridiculous I'm not going to be building all 300 pieces and then create a scoring system and now half of it has been scrapped because other things develop and it's yeah it's one of those things that listen take it on board register it but then kind of come back to it when you're ready yeah amazing so what is one lesson or piece of advice that you wish you would have known before starting the company that's a great question because I probably every week think oh I wish I'd known that software is expensive that and there are really great way that now when I first started there wasn't any AI wasn't really at the forefront um no code low code wasn't really a thing this because this was like three years ago when I was like researching now some really good options out there for getting something quick to market I'm very glad I did it the way I did because I own the code and we own the IP for it but I probably didn't realize how long and how expensive things do take and things that I would be like oh it's only a box probably my software company's favorite phrase from me you know they can't take long it's only a box just build it and then I put Renee no this needs to happen that needs to happen so I'm very grateful for things like chat GTP because I can actually put my ideas into that now and then understand where the tech team are coming from and then try and come up with a really good middle ground of, OK, I know I want it done like this.

27:13Whereas before I just dictate and say, I really want it done like this. How are you going to do that? Now, with the use of technology, I can actually ask the questions, get some finer granular detail to then go to the tech team and say, here's two options of how I'd like to do it. What's the most cost effective and time effective for these? So the learning. And I would say constantly open your mind to learning. Don't delegate everything. Still delegate because you need to, but learn, know what you're talking about and actually have some idea of what the result is going to be because it makes you a much better leader and boss.

27:51Yeah, you kind of also got to know like bits of everything that's happening as well just to know what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. And it's fun and it's great. And I'm learning words and things are happening so much quicker and smoother now and more cheaply because I'm understanding the back end roots of the tech. And I kind of think, oh, can you imagine if I'd known all this two years ago? But here we are. so how long did it take um for a product to actually come out so from the idea to launch so I initially when I left the fleet I left that after 10 years and like I said I only had a small chunk of money like a house deposit size and I utilized that for a whole year because I thought I couldn't go to investors and ask for money if I hadn't put my own in and if I didn't really think this was going to work.

28:53So I did spend a year surveying the market. I went to every startup event that I could. I literally went to move the transportation event. I had nothing except a leaflet. Nothing. Then built a scrappy MVP. So that took a year and that MVP helped me raise enough money to build the product. So then raised the money. That took 10 months to build the product. We launched a beta testing last April, had a great company come on board with just like 2000 drivers, which really helped us get to grips with the market and get driver behavior and feedback going. And then I was able to raise another chunk of money to then be able to iterate the product, put some marketing and sales in place and actually get some staff.

29:42So we're talking now, it's been three years, but a year of surveying the market. Is this going to work a year of building the product testing it iterating it and then this year officially launched in March and we're now in America Australian fleet and all over the UK that's amazing already kind of having presence in different countries as well especially as a lot of companies will kind of just start with the country they found they were started in and then it takes a while to kind of branch out to different places it does I was very definite I'd spent 10 years in an office in North London behind a desk working 18 hour days managing a fleet and I was confined and I thought there's a whole world out there so when I was looking to build this product my main thought was this has to be a global solution because I need to get out there I want to travel I want to see the world I want to see how different people work and manage businesses.

30:43So that was a real focus of me to build a global product from as early as possible. And actually, we found that America, some of the fleets in America, the feedback has been fantastic. The insurers, the adjusters, the carriers love it. And they're very open to implementing new tech. So that's been a really supportive industry, that's a supportive area for us. So we'll be pushing that a lot more over the coming months. that's so amazing so that nicely goes on to one of my final questions which is what does the future hold for Ono and yourself do you have any big plans coming up that obviously you can talk about oh of course I well ultimately I would like Ono to be on the mobile phone of every single driver we want to be the incident reporting app impartial not connected to any insurers brokers or claims companies and that people just feel supported that they've got their data and it's theirs.

31:39We're really wanting to infiltrate the learner driver market. And we've got some big plans coming in regards to that. So some supportive services. And I suppose for us, it's about hitting the different jurisdictions, the different countries, and ultimately building out some of our bigger tech pieces, such as the multi-fleet dashboard, so that we can take companies that got fleets across the world and unify all their incident management so they can really see what's going wrong in the certain countries and where they can save more lives based on what their global incident statistics look like so yeah we just we keep on going get this app out there get the back end dashboard to all the fleets and um keep on reporting incidents okay well amazing and that leads on to my final question which is did you have anything else to add or anything that you wanted to plug?

32:33I suppose I want to say thank you. Thank you to Startup Magazines and thank you to the Hustle Awards because it's these little moments of joy being on the podcast, having your article published in the magazine, having recognition, having your story told. It makes it so satisfying and the support is needed. So thank you. Well, thank you. It's always amazing to be able to cover great businesses especially as our our whole mission is to champion tech startups so it's always important to us that the startups and founders themselves do feel like they're being supported by us we i do thank you for that great team great group of people in that room honestly roll on next year yeah roll on 2026 well thank you so much for coming on the podcast today Renee it's been amazing talking to you and learning more about Ono and once again congratulations on winning most innovative tech at the Hustle Awards thank you so much if you like this episode be sure to subscribe to the podcast and check out startup magazine socials to stay up to date on the latest startups news