Carbid 360 is essentially an online auction that enables auto dealers to buy and sell used cars (wholesale not B2C). A really simple way to get a better idea of our product is to watch the 1 minute and 45 second video via the link below.
https://cardbid360.wistia.com/medias/yo9hdt88kt
Password for Video: Carbid360 video
Note: Capital “C” and space between 0 and video to login
Until we speak I would rather not elaborate on our key differentiators and overall business model. What I can share is the competitive landscape, market opportunity, status of our funding and a little about our team, product dev status, etc.
Competition
ACV Auctions – One of two primary competitors of Carbid 360. ACV has been in business since 2015 and in 2019 they auctioned 240,000 cars out of 9M used cars sold between dealers nationwide…or 2.66% of the market. More importantly ACV secured $150M investment in November of 2019 and were valued at $1.5B at the end of 2019. Here’s a link about ACV’s Series E Round in case you’re interested.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/150m-series-e-funding-fuels-acv-auctions-continued-investment-in-its-marketplace-products-and-footprint-300956884.html
Backlot Cars – Based in Kansas City is the #2 player in this emerging market. Backlot Cars actually doesn’t do live online auctions but rather have a “make an offer” and “buy now” approach. They are also financially backed by Manheim which is the traditional brick and mortar auctions owned by W. Buffet. Anyhow they raised $25M in April of 2019, link below. Note the $100B market comment in this article.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/backlotcars-raises-25-million-to-accelerate-its-rapid-growth-nationwide-in-disrupting-the-100-billion-auto-wholesale-market-300831759.html
Carbid Funding
Seed Round – We have secured investment of $250k of our $250k seed round. We have closed this round June 15th.
Seed Round Extension –we have extend the seed round to somewhere between $750k and $1M.
A Round – TBD
** Key note on Funding: Our business plan was done by an independent consultant out of London in January of 2019. The business plan allowed us to qualify that we have a credible new business opportunity and determine funding requirements. The result was that we need $3.3M to stand up the company and operate it in a manner that we truly believe will result in major success. The valuation, after 5 years, of Carbid was estimated at $419M. These numbers were determined before we had the data points above on ACV Auctions and Backlot Cars so we are convinced the opportunity for CarBid 360 is significantly higher than the original $419M “however” I struggle to share these numbers with people simply because they may come across as unrealistic or “fair tail figures.” : )
Current Team
Leadership – Four people including CEO (Tony), CTO/COO (Gary), CMO (Brittany) and VP of Operations (Jamie)
Software Development – 9 people all based in Manilla, Philippines. Great skillsets and pay rates allow us to get to market at a fraction of the price we would pay if we used an US based software development company.
Product Manager and Project Management – One of each currently which are both extremely talented and instrumental to our growth.
Product Development Status
Wireframing – Completed – 4Q19
Product Development – Completed on June 10 2020 so we now have a GA (Generally Available) product. IOS will be on the Apple store around June 17th and Google Play Store around June 21st.
Field Trial – June 15th to 30th – 15 dealers in the Phoenix to essentially test our product with friendly customers. Note we did 6 weeks of internal testing before determining the product was ready for field trials.
Southwest Region Launch – July 2020 – Covering California, Arizona and Nevada CarBid 360 will launch in our home region then move to the Midwest in late 3Q20 and Texas around the end of the year.
Nationwide – 1H21 is our expectation however we are registering with each of the 50 US states so that we release our marketing campaign and sales team from coast to coast.
In summary we are simply looking to network with potential investors and/or good contacts in general. If you are interested in speaking with me about Carbid 360 please let me know…my contact information is below.
Lee Freeman
[email protected]