Jun 11, 2025 · 50m · innovators-investors
Empowering Vehicle Owners: Automotive Data Ownership & Monetization with MyAutoData
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the Innovators and Investors Podcast, host Christian Marquez interviews Manfred Heiss, founder of MyAutoData (MOD), who outlines his vision for returning automotive data ownership and financial value back to vehicle drivers. Through a decentralized, smartphone-powered platform, MOD bridges the gap between privacy compliance and enterprise data access within a $1.9 trillion connected vehicle market.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Kristian as informed peer 1.9 Guest teaching 2.7 Guest disagreement 0.2 Kristian pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Kristian, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 26:35 Firm refusal to compromise on data custody with corporate partners
Manfred emphatically recounts cancelling an enterprise contract with SAP because their intent to resell user data violated MyAutoData's non-negotiable data stewardship principles.
Hardest push from Kristian ▶ 9:53 Probing technical data integrity and disconnected vehicle cachingMarquez presses past high-level claims to question how vehicle telematics handle massive 25GB/hour data streams when satellite or network connectivity is completely unavailable.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 6:08 Clarifying legal ownership versus physical possession of vehicle telematicsManfred educates the host on privacy statutes like GDPR and CCPA, establishing that drivers legally own their generated data even though automotive manufacturers currently hold possession.
Kristian holds their own ▶ 23:41 Host frames enterprise ROI and probes marketplace scoring maturityMarquez demonstrates commercial acumen by synthesizing the clear ROI for enterprise data buyers and immediately probing whether mature scoring algorithms exist to value driver cohorts.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Kristian as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Kristian pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome Manfred Heiss and the Founding of MyAutoData | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Marquez opens with an introductory question about MyAutoData's origins. Manfred provides an extended background on his decades in automotive IT, explaining the structural categorization between static data, customer experience, and dynamic driving data. | |
| Legal Ownership versus Corporate Possession of Vehicle Data | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Marquez asks whether drivers legally own vehicle data and when OEMs gained possession. Manfred clarifies the crucial legal distinction between data ownership under GDPR/CCPA and corporate possession, while explaining the impact of the 2018 EU eCall mandate. | |
| Technical Data Caching, Storage, and User Vault Control | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Marquez drills into technical edge cases regarding whether continuous 25GB/hr sensor data gets lost in connectivity dead zones. Manfred details local device caching and deferred cloud synchronization. | |
| Consumer Value Proposition: Direct Monetization and Marketplace Savings | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Marquez prompts Manfred on consumer value propositions. Manfred outlines direct monetization via anonymous lead bidding for insurance and municipal mobility research subsidies. | |
| Enterprise Benefits and Targeted Compliant Marketing | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Manfred details enterprise compliance benefits and targeted one-on-one marketing capabilities. Marquez affirms the low friction ROI before asking about scoring frameworks. | |
| Market Valuation, Data Sovereignty, and Green Blockchain Incentives | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Marquez asks whether blockchain is used to maintain custody of user records. Manfred explains crypto-based green mobility incentives and recounts cancelling a partnership with SAP when they attempted to sell user data. | |
| Navigating Product-Market Fit and Go-to-Market Strategy | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Marquez asks about finding product-market fit over the company's six-year lifespan. Manfred details the two-sided marketplace chicken-and-egg dilemma, advice from BMW's former CFO, and their pivot to affiliate marketing and California-focused rollout. | |
| Capital Allocation, Bootstrapping, and Deloitte Validation Study | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Marquez asks about capital allocation between development and go-to-market. Manfred candidly admits burning $1M bootstrapping pure product development before realizing marketing was paramount, leading to a Deloitte validation study and abandoning hardware dongles. | |
| Entrepreneurial Lessons and Connecting with MyAutoData | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Marquez closes with a standard reflective question on advice to younger founders. Manfred emphasizes early risk-taking and persistence before sharing his contact information. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Heiss: Modern cars transmit roughly 25GB of data per hour to OEMs
“When you drive your car, it generates data, and today, about 25 gigabytes per hour are actually withdrawn from the OEMs Stored on their back ends and sold.”
Heiss: GDPR and CCPA Establish Consumers Own the Data They Generate
“Privacy, privacy laws and I think the most representative one is the GDPR in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act. They are very strict and very clear that the person who generates the data is the owner of the data. Doesn't mean he possesses the data…”
Heiss: Auto OEMs Block Consumer Data Access to Retain Monetization
“So they know that this is not their data, but they're making it difficult for us consumers to access that data. And that's why and that's why they can still, you know, make money with our data.”
Heiss: 2018 EU eCall mandate initiated widespread vehicle data connectivity
“2018 in Europe, at least, was the year when the European Commission asked the OEMs to put a so-called emergency call in, in, in, in the car.”
Heiss: Modern connected cars contain 80 to 100 data-collecting sensors
“There's about 80 to a hundred sensors in the car to take that data through the air and report and store it on the back ends of this.”
Heiss: Two-thirds of cars on roads globally remain completely unconnected
“This is only about one third of the cars being connected on our roads and the other two thirds is a total unknown.”
Heiss: Automotive OEMs store vehicle data locally despite claiming otherwise
“They tell you they don't really store data in the car, but they do.”
Heiss: Drivers Earned €200 in German City Data-Sharing Pilot
“And we did a project like this in Germany with a German city. The nice thing is you do, you help the city and you help the environment. But you get even paid because again, the principle is if somebody accesses your data, no, no matter who you get paid. So the…”
Heiss: Automotive personal data is a $1.9 trillion annual market
“Has a global value of about market opportunity of 1.9 trillion dollars, 1.9 trillion dollars every year. That's the value of that personal automotive data. So that means in terms of consumer that has a value of about 1400 dollars per per per per vehicle owner.…”
Heiss: Canceled SAP contract because SAP wanted to sell user data
“We had a contract with SAP, which I canceled because I figured out that they wanted to sell our users data, which is, I said, no, there's no way.”
Heiss: MyAutoData will eventually outgrow Meta
“And that's, that is the idea in the long run is to really create this big organization that will outgrow meta at one point in time.”
Heiss: MyAutoData acts as a data trustee and sells no data
“First of all, I need to mention, it's very important. We are data trustee. We don't sell any data. We are data trustee, right?”
Heiss: Bootstrapped MyAutoData with $1M of personal savings over 3 years
“The whole project is bootstrapped. My money is always a million dollars of my money that went in there in a three year development”