Jeremy Aubin is an engineer and early stage startup operator who fulfilled his childhood goal of living & working in Boston, building his career where the rubber meets the road, friction and all. Today he is the Head of Enablement at Seed stage consumer marketplace & shop management platform TireTutor.
Growing up in No(rthern) Ware, New Hampshire..the location speaks a bit for itself. It’s a big, small town that takes 30 minutes to drive from one side to the other. Jeremy’s dad owned a construction company and built every house they ever lived in growing up. He preached a mindset that if something was broken, you should try and fix it yourself first. His mom worked at local skiing destination Pats Peak. Both parents gave Jeremy and his sister every opportunity they needed to succeed in life.
From an early age, Jeremy wanted to move to Boston. He remembers traveling to visit the Boston Aquarium and looking out the window to see TD Garden, pledging to live in the city one day. From that point on, he was maniacally focused on achieving his goal.
As the first generation in his family to attend a university, Jeremy only applied to colleges in the Boston area. He had a mathematical mindset, taking college level engineering classes in high school and winning a national science award sponsored by Bausch & Loam. He even saved up money to buy himself a 3D printer, experimenting with CAD design, 3D photography, and DNA analysis.
Jeremy chose the Wentworth Institute of Technology to be surrounded by engineers and a strong technical culture. During his time at the university, he learned he didn’t just want to become a good engineer. Instead, he wanted to “talk the talk” and be able to communicate as a business leader in addition to having a strong technical background. Though he maintains he can still give any engineer a good run for their money on CAD design!
During his freshman year, Jeremy’s “Intro to Business” professor encouraged the class to get dressed up and attend an alumni event where Jason Abrahams, the Founder of TireTutor, was pitching his new startup. Jeremy thought the pitch was awesome and went up to introduce himself after the event. He even sent a follow up note afterward! Crickets.
During Jeremy’s junior year, Jason was back at Wentworth to teach a class called Entrepreneurial Marketing. Jeremy enrolled, got an A, and jumped at the opportunity to intern for Jason’s startup as part of Wentworth’s co-op program.
Jason’s generosity in giving back to Wentworth with his time and insights turbocharged the start of Jeremy’s career and he’ll forever be thankful. During the co-op, Jeremy did a bit of everything. He cold called prospects, sometimes got yelled at, and helped lay the groundwork for TireTutor’s emerging platform.
TireTutor was the first software platform to do true e-commerce for independent tire and service dealers across the U.S. They built an ordering platform connecting tire suppliers to process online orders from tire dealers and repair shops.
In those early days, Jeremy helped take online orders manually to help better scope the initial system buildout. Jason gave him more responsibility as he paid his dues and he was practically working at the startup full time by his senior year.
Once he graduated, Jeremy joined TireTutor full time to lead their initial product development efforts from 0-1. It was a tremendous learning experience, where he quickly figured out what he was good and..not so good at. Jason was kind enough to give him the space to fail and Jeremy threw whatever ego he previously had out the window.
The first big project they tackled after Jeremy joined the team full time was to launch their wholesale enterprise software platform. He worked closely with TireTutor’s Head of Engineering, Gizmo, navigating critical early decisions and accelerating the product development process by gathering customer feedback and advice. Alongside their early engineering team, Jeremy helped build the product from the ground up to become a platform and grow to handle millions of dollars of GMV (gross merchandise volume).
The wholesale enterprise buildout was a truly humbling experience. The quality level needed to be incredibly high and there wasn’t a lot of customer patience for screw ups. It was the first software in the vertical and they were able to integrate into their customers’ workflow via an Oracle/NetSuite API integration.
After testing with some initial customers over the first few months, the team built a plan to roll out their new platform gradually to the remaining customer base. But best laid plans quickly go out the window in startups.. A couple weeks before their planned launch, one of their largest customers had their old platform go down and asked to switchover early. Luckily, the TireTutor team was ready! They flipped the “on” switch to the new platform early. Working through the night, they began calling 800 customers across New England in <5 days to facilitate the migration across their customer base. That’s ripping a bandaid off!
Eventually, TireTutor hired a new Head of Product with more extensive experience. Jeremy gained an affinity for data and invaluable experience learning the inner workings of their application technology stack. He even helped bring on Sigma (like Tableau but on steroids) which was one of the best strategic decisions they’ve made from a software vendor standpoint to date.
Jeremy stepped up into a Head of Data role next to build out internal dealer reporting. This helped TireTutor better qualify their customers and understand their ongoing performance through a combination of analytics & marketing tools. He helped build an enrichment process so TireTutor had a fully fledged competitive market database and better sense of their various growth opportunities. He leveraged Google Cloud to lay the foundation for a data platform with customer & partnership insights to better inform the roadmap for tools & processes they should be using.
Once this project was completed, Jeremy became the Head of Revenue Enablement. In this role he owns technical partnerships and is responsible for setting the strategy for how they go to market as a team. He helps set the operating budgets, working closely with Jason and their investors. Jeremy also owns operations & enablement in terms of how their GTM team sells, packages their offerings, and how they deliver their service for customers from strategy to content to better achieve their goals.
Heading into 2025, the TireTutor team is highly focused on operations with launching the first true all-in-one POS at the end of 2024. This year is about focusing on the key metrics that drive their business as they become a growth stage company.
Navigating Tough Situations Drives Strategic Success
Navigating tough situations is a fundamental part of life in early stage startups. Jeremy’s hard won recipe for success? Get really close to customers, stay close to them, and live in your function.
When TireTutor set their early GTM strategy, it was critical for them to be able to “talk the talk” of their customer base. More generally known as “domain expertise”.
It was Jeremy’s experience, both by inexperience and logging all of those hours, that having a consistent “ground game” is what drives strategy. Not the other way around.
Strategy comes from talking to 100s of customers and properly segmenting your market successfully. Deeply understanding the customer segments pays huge dividends because not all prospects and customers are created equal.
TireTutor found that there were specific tire focused shops that fit their early platform really well. Then, over time, they also grew to serve shops who sold tires in addition to repair work. Both are great customers but each has a unique way of being prospected, closed, and serviced.
By staying close to all types of customers, Jeremy and TireTutor continue to provide solutions that they understand their customers want. That’s where the rubber meets the road!
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Leave Ego at the Door – “Leaving your ego at the door and being open to what it means to be good at something and not so good at something is an important first step to succeeding in a startup environment. It took me time to embrace that!”
Having Thick Skin – “Startups aren’t easy. You might get yelled at by your customers some days! Having thick skin is about being able to work through those challenges and around them each day to achieve your long term goals”
All Problems Aren’t Problems – “We all have problems that we deal with. But just because there are challenges, doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Not all problems need to be or can be solved. But being honest about where things stand is really important to making progress”
Today, Jeremy is 100% focused on helping TireTutor and their team succeed. His greatest takeaway thus far is wanting to follow the theme of making a change in an industry in some way that he believes in. Going through this experience, there are hard days, so having the level of belief that what you’re doing is important helps him see through to the other side. Especially when you’re supporting people’s livelihoods and businesses!
If you want to learn more about Jeremy you can find him building GTM strategy at TireTutor, exploring Boston, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing your hard fought insights. We’re excited to see your accomplishments continue to build in Boston in the coming years!