An app or service to easily find a car expert who will help car buyers find, evaluate and negotiate the purchase of a used car.
Categories: Automotive, service marketplace, gig economy
Skills required: Software or app development or no-code, some car industry knowledge
The Pitch
Buying a used car is an inefficient, unenjoyable, no good, terrible process.
There’s a lot to consider when buying a car - what you want to buy, who you want to buy it from, how to ensure you’re buying something reliable. You’re constantly questioning if you’re being scammed, overpaying, or otherwise buying a lemon. For the vast majority of people who are not car experts, this can quickly feel like a game that is designed for you to lose.
We’ve seen lots of innovation on the selling side in recent years, but somehow buying a car is still the same old dance. Going digital hasn’t really made this better.
If you buy a house, most people get a real estate agent.
If you’re making a big investment, most people get a financial advisor or an accountant.
But if you’re dropping $20k on a car… you’re at the mercy of the salesperson or the guy who posted an ad on craigslist.
Why isn’t there an easy way to enlist the help and advice of an expert when buying a car?
Instead of handling by themselves, buyers could hop onto a web or mobile app, and find car experts in their area who will effectively buy a car for them. Buyers can filter down for specific expertise, see reviews from past customers, and see the expert’s car resumé and background. Experts could offer varying levels of service - car sourcing, car evaluation, negotiation - which can packaged together as the buyer so chooses. Experts remain agnostic to dealers or sellers, so the buyer truly has someone in their corner.
Would you or someone you know pay a few hundred bucks to outsource this process to someone who actually know what they’re doing?
Within my network, the majority of people I asked said they would be delighted if a service like this existed, and happily pay a healthy fee for it.
Please, someone StartThis!
The Background
This is another idea that comes from personal experience. When I bought a car, I was fortunate enough to have a ‘car friend’ who would look things over and give me his opinions. It saved me from buying a few potential lemons - including one car he was able to show me had been in a fairly serious accident, despite a clean CARFAX report - and ultimately made me a lot more confident in my final decision.
Fast forward to recently, when my partner was in need of a car. She lives in an area where neither of us have a network to tap into. Most of her friends didn’t even buy in the area, so we didn’t know where to start. We’re going in blind, and both of us have stalled on a decision for months because it feels like a hopeless pursuit. This kind of situation quickly becomes a very time and energy consuming process.
Why can’t everyone have a ‘car friend’? I suspect there are lot of car enthusiasts, retired or part-time mechanics, and other automative gurus who I think would happily lend their expertise in exchange for a fair fee.
While there appear to be some localized services that offer this sort of thing, no one seems to have jumped on the opportunity to do this at scale. Mainly, this seems to be because everyone has tried to do it with full-time employees, instead of tapping into the gig space and technology.
Strategy Notes
Trust is the most critical component here. You would need to spend a lot of time on this and put together a very strong process for screening/onboarding, reputation management, and moderation. End users are likely willing to accept a little bit of variability in quality when dealing individual contractors, but a couple really bad experiences could kill this concept quickly.
If you are just starting out, put a ton of screening in place - background checks, reference checks, knowledge tests, identity verification, etc. This is a good “do things that don’t scale” case.
A good ongoing reputation management system is going to be equally important. Allow buyers to rate their experience across many different factors - similar to AirBnB - and allow them to leave detailed comments. Have a strong probation and removal policy for experts who get poor reviews.
An in-app payment system will be critical for security and your ability to collect fees. There are a few variations of pricing, but I think the clear model here is service fees that are either added to the expert’s fees, or deducted from the fees afterwards. To start, you can probably create set fees for different offerings. You also want to have clear definitions of each offering, as well as a guide for new car experts who come on board so that services offered are consistent. Later, you can open this up more for experts to set their own prices and modified services.
Start out locally. This gives you far more control over the process - you can insist on meeting every car expert, and even oversee some of the services. It also just makes sense from a marketing and traction perspective, as you can utilize your own networks and some guerilla marketing.
You can advertise on social media and local buy and sell marketplaces fairly cheaply to get things going. Buying a car is transactional and infrequent, so a referral system is important to generate sustainable value.
There are enough no-code or template sites available that you could probably have an MVP up in a weekend. Check out Sharetribe and some Thumbtack and TaskRabbit clones. There are lots of services that will have payments, messaging, and reputation management out of the box. You can always take that in-house later; it’s better to have something reliable and trustworthy from the start.
Build up a decent roster of experts in one area so that there are enough options when buyers start coming on. Post on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace recruiting for experts. Find some local meetups or car groups that you can network into. The more specific expertise, the better. It’s extremely rare to find experts on all makes and models of cars, but you can probably find someone who knows 2005-2009 Honda Civics like the back of their hand. A larger pool of niche experts gives buyers more choice, and a higher likelihood of a great experience.
Data & Research
40.8 million used cars were sold in the US in 2019 - which is more than double that of new car sales. Demand for used cars is also increasing, causing a shortage of supply. As a result, it’s getting harder to find a good price for a good used car.
McKinsey released a comprehensive report of used car market, and the many shifts happening. A consistent theme is that consumers are increasingly wary of brick and mortar dealerships, but still reluctant to adopt online channels.
Name Ideas
A lot of good car-related domains are gone, but you can still get creative. Available domains: find.auto ($), carconsultant.com ($$$), getcarx.com ($$$), carczar.com (?), getcarexpert.com ($). Of course, if you go mobile app first, the domain is less important. Like most ideas, a real branding expert could pick just about anything here and turn it into a suitable name (which might also be more defensible as a trademark anyway).
Would you use this service? Share your thoughts!
StartThis Idea #7: The buy-a-car-for-me service
This is a great idea. People are using companies like Carvana and Vroom for two reasons: 1. Convenience of buying a car from home, but also 2. They are uninformed and/or do not want to negotiate with a dealer. People will pay a premium using these digital alternatives as a result. I’m a big believer in the Carvana model for sure (I’ve bought a car from them and had it delivered 3 days after adding it to my cart), but it will absolutely not be the defacto way to buy cars even in 5-10 years. I think there’s a huge opportunity for this model.