Léa Miggiano was just 23 years old when she founded Carvolution (RAC III). Since then, Carvolution has achieved an impressive trajectory, becoming the leading car subscription company in Switzerland and offering a more convenient and sustainable alternative to car ownership. From our initial lead investment in Carvolution's Series A round in 2019, we are proud to empower this GameChanger by continuing our investments through our multi-stage Summit Fund.
Our GP Sebastian Becker recently spoke with Léa to discuss her career trajectory, the experience of growing up with your company, creating a healthy company culture, and much more.
Sebastian: You were very young when you founded Carvolution. How was your learning journey the last few years, growing up alongside the company?
Léa: I don't know how different it is from other careers or perspectives. What is definitely true is there’s a certain cost to being an entrepreneur. It needs a lot of dedication, a lot of focus. While others in their twenties went on crazy travels, I’ve spent these years working on Carvolution. For me, it's totally worth it and is a compromise I enjoy making.
I'm learning at a very fast pace, and I’ve learned that there's always something new to discover. I think this keeps me very open-minded, which is the case with entrepreneurship and why I also enjoy it. So there's no ‘biggest’ learning. I think the biggest learning is that you always have to keep learning and to keep an open, curious mind.
Watch the full interview here:
Sebastian: It is clear you’re doing a great job. Carvolution has become such a strong brand in Switzerland, in large part thanks to your role as founder responsible for marketing. How did you build the brand? How did you achieve such strong brand recognition in so little time?
Léa: There are two things people like to say about marketing: Either you're brave and have an idea, or you have money. We were in a very fortunate situation where we had both brave ideas and we had money to spread it. So it was not just me doing it, but the company was in a very good setup which allowed us to say, hey, we have a good product, and we're in a phase where we advertise for it.
I think certain things were also luck. We always knew we needed to be a brand that people trusted, so we knew that the personal approach would be important. There's also a lot of background testing which you don’t see, to see what works, what doesn’t, what script etc. We were very lucky that the things that worked well were things we could do in-house, which allowed us to move fast. But ultimately the brand you build in marketing needs every other department to actually deliver the same in the company - if we just say we have great customer service, and then it's not great, people will not trust our marketing anymore. So it's really the effort of the full company and every single person working at Carvolution.
Sebastian: One notable thing about your marketing mix is that you’re the face of Carvolution. Many founders have asked me how much PR they should do and how much they should be that public face. What was your experience and why did you decide to do that? What kind of impact did it have on the journey of Carvolution?
Léa: Back when we took that decision, I was just the cheapest actor you could get. Looking at it now, it was also very aligned with our strategy, culture, brand positioning, and our values of being down-to-earth, and wanting this trust. If I could recommend it to everybody? I think it really depends on the business and on the founders, and is not something you should do because you have to. For us it felt like the right thing and this is why we did it.
However, I also think that a brand has to work without its individual founders and it's a founder's job to build a company that can succeed without them. Of course this is the challenge we face now, where we have to think about the next steps, but the marketing works well because it's so honest. I feel like I am Carvolution. It sounds very cheesy and terrible, but it's just how it is. It's not a story, and I think this is why it works. That said, the brand is starting to stand independently from me, even if people still connect me to Carvolution. It's nothing we want to erase or remove, but for us it works. Luckily for us it was cheap, honest, fun for me and the brand, and it worked, so why not?
Sebastian: It's an industry which is pretty male-dominated, and unfortunately there also are not that many women founders. What was your experience as a woman founder working within this male-driven industry? Has it impacted or affected you?
Léa: To be honest, when I started I was very naive because I hadn’t even thought about that. Instead I thought: I'm entering mobility innovation. I wasn't aware that this would be a male thing. It was only if a journalist or people asked me if I was aware that I was the only one there, that I would realize, “Yeah, now that you mention it, I am.” But I think it was this confidence that I wasn’t doing anything weird that didn't let other people let me feel it. When it comes to funding, yes, I can read the statistics and obviously it's a serious problem that female founders don't get the funds, however, I personally never had a bad experience. My biggest chance is trying to be a good role model, to say you can get the funds, but I cannot tell you the story of how difficult it is. I think you should try to go and be exposed. Just because there are only a few women somewhere shouldn't be a reason not to try to do something.
Sebastian: Beautifully said. We at redalpine are always looking for female founders and we’ve seen the numbers increasing over the years.
Apart from driving marketing at the company, you are also a great builder of culture and you recently even contributed to a book which is called “Wo wir gerne arbeiten” by Ruedi Nützi. What defines a good or great startup culture for you? And what kind of principles do you implement at Carvolution in order to achieve that?
Léa: Culture for me used to be something very abstract and I thought, “Who needs culture? Obviously we will enjoy going to work and it will be nice.” So when I learned those things at university, I felt I didn't understand why we should spend time on it. But now building the company and going into different stages from only five people to 13, then more, you understand how important it is to be very clear on how you behave. The only thing that really works for me is to behave how you want other people to behave. You cannot be impatient if you want other people to be patient with each other. You have to define what works best for you and the only thing that really works for me is being authentic.
I always want to communicate with my team, so that we can create that culture together. Culture is not just my problem, it’s all of our problem. Through this we can create a culture where we communicate well and have a good atmosphere. A culture is good when you like working with those people. Everything else is not a good culture.
What you also realize as an entrepreneur is that at some point, people will decide to leave your company. I was really hurt when the first people left and I asked myself if I did something wrong. Do we have to fix something? Then I realized there are simply some cultures that are not right for some people, and to accept that. Sometimes you're a bad manager for a specific person and that's alright. This is the culture I believe is good and healthy. If you try to build up a culture which is right for everybody, you don't have a culture. That said there are many theories and I hope I still will learn a lot about culture in the next couple of years.
Sebastian: Very well said! We studied together and I can remember those lectures on leading by example, and having the founding team define what their values were, and what culture they wanted to have in the company being very important. Looking at Carvolution, what are the biggest learnings of the last few years?
Léa: It always depends on what has happened in the last couple of days because that’s always freshest in my mind, but trying to zoom out a bit of that, I would say things you believe matter a lot never matter as much as you think. It's always the big picture. Sometimes we try to put a lot of energy and focus into one certain thing because it seems to be the killer criteria at that specific moment, and sometimes you have to ask if it is worth all the energy.
As an entrepreneur, we really love this “doing” mode. We like to do things, but sometimes we have to learn to say, let's think a little bit longer about what we're trying to do, do it properly, and also not freak out too fast if something doesn't work. Because it's only a small part of a bigger thing. With a puzzle, even if one puzzle piece is missing, it's not the complete puzzle, and you can still see the picture. When you scale, there are more things to think about, and you have to ask what their impact will be. Complexity goes up, which is also very interesting.
Sebastian: Looking to the future and the bright future of Carvolution, what's next?
Léa: Every time I say something about the future in an interview, I listen back to it later and think, how wrong could I be? So the next big move? I don't think we need one next big move. We're at the point where we need small little moves in the right direction, and in the end this will be our next big move. When you think about milestones, they are not as big as they seem on paper, but rather improving bit by bit every day and things coming together. This is what we really need: not the big bangs everybody talks about but more little steps in the right direction. This is the next big move.
Carvolution merges a deep understanding of consumer needs with a user-friendly interface, creating a scalable solution for the growing demand for flexible, all-inclusive mobility options. Since our initial investment in 2019, Carvolution has led the car subscription market in Switzerland and established itself as a dominant market leader. It has also become one of the most funded subscription startups globally.
We have supported Carvolution through every stage of their journey—from leading their Seed round, helping secure funds in subsequent rounds, and building their team, to providing strategic guidance through our multi-stage Summit Fund. We remain committed to supporting their growth and expansion!