Cars & Bids Launch Surge

Doug DeMuro shares the story of the chaotic launch of Cars & Bids during COVID in 2020.

"The first month was chaos. Like you hear from any startup founder who's successful, we had the good problem of not having planned for the success that came, but the bad problem of having to deal with it on the fly.

We were hiring people, talking to them on Zoom - we didn't even have an office, it was COVID. We launched in June of 2020, launched the whole business from my back patio. We're talking to people by the pool - the whole situation was a complete disaster.

When we first launched, we had this idea to attract sellers by offering $1,000 for the first 50 cars on the site and $500 for the next 50 cars. It was a brilliant idea - it was spending $75,000 but it was the greatest $75,000 we ever spent because we got so many submissions right away. However, then we had to deal with them all, and it was a nightmare. It was all me doing it basically.

That first two months was definitely the most chaotic and ridiculous of my entire life. We started to build more infrastructure and team after that, but I was still in the trenches doing everything until the Churnin investment came and we got more cash. Then we could finally start putting people in their roles and I could go back to my biggest asset to the business - doing the content."