Author: Katherine Berko

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

A soon-to-launch Arlington-based startup called Reyets — pronounced “rights” — is creating a mobile app that people can use when they are in a crisis or if they fear that their rights are being violated.

The company’s founder, Wa’il Ashshowwaf, created Reyets as a way for people to protect themselves in precarious situations such as when getting pulled over while driving or getting kicked off a plane. Ashshowwaf noticed that people often use their phone cameras to record these situations.

“They’re using that [camera] for accountability, to get justice,” Ashshowwaf said.

However, he felt that cameras were just one tool for getting justice and could only be used during the incident.

“You can use [Reyets] before you have an incident, during the incident and after,” Ashshowwaf said.

As soon as the Reyets app is open, the user can press the record button, and it begins to record and continues to do so, even on a locked screen. If the person’s phone is snatched, the recording will not be lost as it is saved automatically to the cloud. A recording can also be live streamed from the app.

After an incident, users can write a report about what just happened on the app, then attach the audio, video or picture evidence. That report can then be shared as a secure file with whoever the person asks for help. There is a “Get Help” section of the app, where users can reach out to local lawyers, rights organizations or media outlets.

“The reason that section is important right now is all that information is available but it’s very dispersed on the web,” Ashshowwaf explained. “You’re going to find that each outlet has a different way to contact it – it’s not really centralized.”

The app also has a section with information on people’s rights. If somebody is in a situation and they are unsure whether or not they are being treated properly, they can open the app and quickly scan their related rights.

The app has both a quick description and a longer description, so that if the user is in a rush, they can get the gist of their rights in one sentence.

There is also a community section on the app, which functions similarly to an online forum, with articles, questions and advice. People can share their experiences on the section and receive feedback on their questions, such as whether or not they should report something. Users can also share videos on the community page.

“Say there’s a protest going on — it’s all about building this community around it,” Ashshowwaf said.

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Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

In today’s society, time equals money. GoMoto, an Arlington-based automotive software startup, aims to save customers time when it comes to buying and maintaining cars with its kiosk technology.

“We took the airport kiosk check-in model and applied it to the new car sales and the service lane of automotive dealerships so that consumers can have convenience, transparency and own the actual buying experience themselves,” said Todd Marcelle, the CEO and founder of GoMoto.

GoMoto currently has partnerships with Ford, Kia and Panasonic, and its kiosks can be found at hundreds of dealerships around the country.

According to Marcelle, in the United States, the average car purchase takes four hours. So GoMoto created 32-inch, large-screen kiosks to speed up the transaction process.

With these kiosks it can take as little as one hour to buy a car, since customers no longer have to sit at a desk, talk to a salesperson and answer a bunch of questions when they go into a dealership. Instead, they walk over to the kiosk and and begin their shopping. With those kiosks, customers can filter their car options based on their own personal criteria.

“It’s an engaging environment where customers have a sense of control because they can actually touch, move and navigate their shopping experience,” Marcelle said.

In turn, Marcelle said, the car dealerships using the kiosks see an 18-27 percent increase in sales.

“Consumers will typically purchase more… if [the product] is presented in a smart and intelligent way,” said Marcelle.

GoMoto also brings dealerships improved customer satisfaction ratings on maintenance visits, something Marcelle believes is imperative for the industry because satisfaction around auto service can be relatively low. Check-in for service at a kiosk takes little more than 90 seconds, while checking out takes a matter of three minutes.

Customers arrive at the dealership and, rather than wait up to 15 minutes to see a service advisor, approach a kiosk, check-in within a minute, drop off their keys and leave.

“Service is the lifeblood of our business,” said Marcelle. “When we can build solutions that create more loyal customers and increase the lifetime value of those customers, that’s where we can be successful as dealers and make more margin on new car sales.”

Marcelle created GoMoto in 2013 with one of his co-founders, Benjamin Catanese, because both of them own several car dealerships in New Jersey. It was at these dealerships where the men were identifying problems with their own customer experience.

“Instead of relying on vendors, I drew upon my experience as founder of other companies and as an investor, to build a technology platform to [fix these issues],” Marcelle said.

So, Marcelle founded GoMoto with Catanese, originally as a part-time job. Now, it’s Marcelle’s full-time profession.

At first, they worked with a few dealerships in Philadelphia, where they created popup retail centers. Customers would come into the popup centers, go up to a kiosk to compare different car models and then test-drive the cars.

However, this model was unsuccessful so GoMoto pivoted and eventually created the kiosks which they continue to use today.

Even though GoMoto initially had its success in Philadelphia, Marcelle chose to base the company out of Arlington because he liked the people in the area.

“It’s the right market for talent,” Marcelle said. “[Arlington is full of] smart, innovative, hungry people that want to push the envelope and who like the startup community.”