Random Email Sparks Acquisition

Doug DeMuro shares how a random email from a viewer led to launching Cars & Bids and its eventual sale to Churning Group.

"I get random emails since my email address is in all my videos. A viewer named Blake emailed me saying 'Hey, I know we live close by in San Diego, I have this car if you ever want to get dinner.' This was before I had a kid and I would meet up with random people from the internet - I did this many times, probably 100 times. It was how I made friends when we moved to new cities.

I met up with him and learned that he did something in tech. Only a couple months after our meeting, I wanted to start this auction site. I called him and said 'Hey, I know you do something in tech, can we do this? What do you think?'

He had actually just sold a car on Bring a Trailer and recognized some of the deficiencies. He said 'Yeah, this is a great idea.' We used some seed money from his company to get off the ground and get started. Right away we were quickly earning revenue and quickly profitable.

Later we sold the majority stake to Churning Group for around $40 million when it was only 2-3 years old."