By Riley Kaminer
No one likes getting tickets. But managing citations and tolls is a particular headache for fleets.
“Fleets are unique because they have a mismatch between the person who took the action to get the ticket and the person who’s ultimately on the hook for the ticket,” entrepreneur Megan Broccoli, a South Florida native, told Refresh Miami.
This mismatch can ultimately get costly. It can easily take months to receive and process these citations, and mixups in the mail can lead to expensive fines. That’s why Broccoli decided in 2021 to launch Voi Logistics, a violation management solution for any kind of fleet.
Clients such as rental car agencies, multinational logistics fleets, and utility subtractors leverage Voi’s digital platform to reduce the liability from citations by as much as 50%. Once they have subscribed to Voi’s platform, fleets share their plate numbers. Voi then passes these numbers through their integrations with government databases.
“If anything hits, we take action right away, so it’s proactive,” said Broccoli. That way, customers avoid hefty fines. Depending on the nature of the business, Voi either pays these violations off immediately or sends them reports at regular intervals. The company also has an on-demand product that enables users to subscribe or unsubscribe a vehicle based on a rental start and stop time.
The startup now has nine employees – most of whom are based in Miami. Most of its clients are based in the US, but Broccoli signaled that the company has seen significant growth in Europe since launching there in March.
“We have been profitable since month one,” said Broccoli. “We’ve never taken debt. I’m a big proponent of that, having gone through investor yuckiness before.” The only downside of bootstrapping? “If you don’t have any money in the bank, there’s nothing.”
But that is worth it, in Broccoli’s estimation. “It’s stressful doing it that way. But now that we’re a couple of years into this, it feels good to have a clean cap table.” Broccoli cites having a good team that believed in Voi’s mission as critical to the startup’s success.
Broccoli is no stranger to overcoming adversity. She had a baby while she was a student at Florida Atlantic University, becoming a single mother at age 21. Incidentally, this experience taught Broccoli lessons that would be useful to her as a founder.
“I’ve become used to figuring it out – adapting and pivoting and dealing with what comes at me at the moment.” This ability to adapt and change course as needed would serve Broccoli well, as Voi determined its most effective path to profitability over time.
One of Voi’s core competencies is, in Broccoli’s words, “pulling ugly data out of old databases and making it useful.” She explained that the recent advances in AI could serve Voi well going forward – in particular, when it comes to interpreting and leveraging this data. She also underscored the growth of the autonomous vehicle movement, and figuring out ways that Voi can help AV companies. “I’m really excited to apply what we’ve done across different modalities,” said Broccoli.
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