As the 2020s get well underway, there are two fields that are still primarily male-dominated – technology and automotive. Women have to work hard to break the proverbial glass ceiling in either industry. And then we have Mehrsa Raeiszadeh, the co-founder of MintList, who’s smashing a glass ceiling that looks suspiciously like a sunroof.
Original, Innovative, and User-Friendly
MintList has been lauded for its originality and innovation, becoming the first Canadian company to win the Stevie Award for Tech Startup of the Year in the Software category. It’s easy to see why the innovative platform brings buyers and car dealerships together with exquisite simplicity. Like one dealer said to Mehrsa and her co-founder Mike Wood, “Why didn’t I think of this before you did?”. Needless to say, after they turned down his offer to fund the entire platform, he signed up.
MintList shines in an online marketplace that’s quickly becoming saturated with players. Unlike its peers, MintList doesn’t have its own inventory of cars, it instead allows consumers who sell their existing vehicle on MintList to use the funds to purchase another vehicle within seven days from any dealer on the MintList platform. This benefits the customer as they have hundreds of vehicles to choose from and make significant tax savings when they trade in a vehicle. In the past, these tax savings were only allowed when using the same dealer for both a trade-in and a new vehicle purchase.
Mehrsa found it easy to start this platform. “I’m a techie, I believe in technology, and I know that whatever I want to build, I can build,” she says. “So, I wanted to partner with someone who has his or her pulse on the industry so that whatever I build will be used by a lot of people. The other big thing is a co-founder I can trust.” She found both those qualities in co-founder Mike Wood, a veteran Metro Vancouver car dealer pro.
The Road Trip to MintList
While starting MintList was an easy decision, her journey until now involved overcoming multiple obstacles. Growing up in Iran, she strived to exceed the expectations of a pathologist mother and a general military father, to whom 100 out of 100 wasn’t good enough. She broke national records on Iran’s swim team before heading to the U.S. for a master’s in science at the University of Tennessee. Her next big goal? To complete her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech in three years. Highly driven, it’s no surprise that she did just that, with 20+ publications and patents under her belt to boot.
She visited Vancouver shortly after, where she became involved in an early startup, UBC-based medical device firm Microdermics helping them scale up their processes from 60 percent efficiency to 98 percent efficiency. A few other ventures later, Mike Wood asked her to read a business plan he had written up. The rest, as they say, is history…
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MintList – The Platform
MintList is an AI-powered platform for buying, selling, and trading cars. It gets rid of the hassle of trying to sell cars privately by posting ads or the doubts that come in when haggling over a ‘fair price’ with an experienced dealer. As an online auction site, customers on Mintlist can get up to $4,000 more than single dealer offers. In fact, MintList offers a free online valuation tool that compares multiple offers from other car sales sites, so you can see how much money you can get for your used car.
Pre-vetted buyers mean that you won’t have to worry about payments and purchases. All you need to do is take some photos as we guide you through and then sit back and watch the bids roll in. Trade in your car on MintList today to save thousands of dollars in taxes.
