In God we trust. Everyone else: bring data
Michael Bloomberg.
This week I purchased a car to replace the second love of my life (behind my wife), my 2012 Peugeot 208 hatchback. Still sporting the dent from when someone attempted to steal the badge off the front bonnet some years ago, the car has been a constant companion over the past 12 years. It carried me trustily to countless family events, best friends’ weddings, my trip to the hospital to remove my appendix, my job interview with EVP, and was ground zero for my first kiss with the aforementioned wife. Parting ways was tricky. But when the annual running costs began to exceed the market value of the car (more on this later), I knew it was time to say farewell.
Recently I led EVP’s investment into AutoGrab, provider of workflow software and data intelligence to the automotive, insurance and finance industries. As I re-entered the car market after 12 years, I was quickly and regularly reminded of why AutoGrab has managed to grow from a standing start just 4 years ago, to be one of EVP’s strongest performing portfolio companies today. In a market awash with inefficiencies, and solutions dominated by incumbents whose products were launched more than 75 years ago, cofounders Daniel Werzberger and Chris Gardner’s product is a genuine saving grace for the auto industry.
Finding the New Car: Like all good customers, I browsed across Facebook Marketplace, Carsales, Gumtree and a couple of other listing sites. Pretty quickly I saw 30% price variances within models at similar mileage and similar condition. At least half of the consumers and dealerships listing their cars seemed to be lost without pricing guidance.
Organising Finance: I, like 90% of car buyers in Australia, decided to use finance for the new car. Despite being a loan secured against the value of the car, the lender gave an interest rate and repayment schedule without knowledge of how much I bargained down the price of the car, or any of the specific configurations that came with my specific purchase.
Insuring the Car: In taking out insurance on the car, I had to agree with the insurer on the insured value for the car to calculate premiums and to make future write-off decisions. In my case, the “market value” suggested by the insurer was 28% higher than the actual price I negotiated on the new car as new models were starting to flood the market.
Selling the Old Car: Being a 12-year old French car with a dent in the front bonnet and some undiagnosed engine issues, my expectations on a sale value were pretty subdued. Looking at the listing websites gave me some idea where to pitch the price. The dealer trade-in offer came in even lower. A day later, a car trader offered double the trade-in value (gleefully accepted).
Each of these steps is challenging for dealers, lenders and insurers with the normal ebbs and flows of automotive markets. Add in lingering impacts of COVID disruptions to supply chains, electric vehicles flooding markets globally, the emergence of online car dealerships, and increasing fragmentation of listing websites… and all of a sudden, these tasks have become a whole lot harder. Multiply this chaos by the 3m cars bought and sold each year in Australia alone and you get a sense of the dollars at stake from inaccurate or lacking data.
AutoGrab: A New Automotive Intelligence Platform
Understanding the inefficiencies described above in 1000x more detail, Daniel and Chris founded AutoGrab in 2020. They conceived a data intelligence platform based on live market data plus comprehensive factory configuration information to drag the industry into a new age of real-time pricing and availability intel. Having worked for a collective 20+ years in and around dealerships, the pair saw a compelling opportunity to uplift performance across the industry.
In AutoGrab, the team has built a suite of applications driven off actual transaction data, listing information, wholesale market intel and manufacturer configuration data to give customers the accurate information they need to run their businesses efficiently. Real-time, comprehensive, accurate and easy to use data, in products tailor made for each individual business. Think of a Bloomberg terminal, but for the auto industry.
Applying AutoGrab to my experience above and everything suddenly looks new age:
Finding the new car: Instead of dealerships relying on gut feel and manual searches, AutoGrab uses proprietary algorithms to suggest pricing based on specific registration-level configurations and alerts users in real-time when their stock is over or underpriced compared to the market.
Organising Finance: Lenders use AutoGrab to determine vehicle specific, real-time market valuations to determine credit decisions, interest rates and repayment schedules.
Insuring the car: Insurers use AutoGrab’s pricing algorithms to come up with valuations to determine premiums and guide write off decisions. Insurers leverage AutoGrab valuation reports in communicating write off-decisions with customers.
Selling the old car: Dealerships and traders use AutoGrab’s pricing algorithms to determine live market values to inform prices they can afford to purchase the vehicle at while maintaining profitability. AutoGrab informs dealers and traders of availability across the market to determine if they can get a similar vehicle elsewhere.
Post-launch, the business has rapidly scaled beyond 300 customers across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and the UK. Dealerships, wholesalers, lenders, insurers, fleet owners and manufacturers across these markets have flocked to AutoGrab’s products and have consistently increased usage post-purchase as the software becomes embedded in their day to day operations.
In the same vein, A-grade talent has jumped on board, with leading execs from the software, automotive and finance industries joining AutoGrab as it continues to accelerate.
At EVP we subscribe to Marc Andreessen’s view not to invest via a checklist. In fast growing technology businesses, there are almost always going to be reasons to say no, if you look hard enough. For AutoGrab though, every box on the hypothetical checklist had a big tick when we made the decision to partner up in late 2023. We saw a business with stellar financial performance, selling a novel mission critical solution for a large global underserved market, led by exceptional industry-insider founders and a very strong executive team. And that’s why we invested in AutoGrab.
My experience buying and selling a car over the past couple of weeks has brought the scale of the problem AutoGrab is tackling into sharper focus. I can’t wait to see how different it will all look when I next buy a car with all parties empowered by AutoGrab.
In God we trust. Everyone else: bring data
Michael Bloomberg.
This week I purchased a car to replace the second love of my life (behind my wife), my 2012 Peugeot 208 hatchback. Still sporting the dent from when someone attempted to steal the badge off the front bonnet some years ago, the car has been a constant companion over the past 12 years. It carried me trustily to countless family events, best friends’ weddings, my trip to the hospital to remove my appendix, my job interview with EVP, and was ground zero for my first kiss with the aforementioned wife. Parting ways was tricky. But when the annual running costs began to exceed the market value of the car (more on this later), I knew it was time to say farewell.
Recently I led EVP’s investment into AutoGrab, provider of workflow software and data intelligence to the automotive, insurance and finance industries. As I re-entered the car market after 12 years, I was quickly and regularly reminded of why AutoGrab has managed to grow from a standing start just 4 years ago, to be one of EVP’s strongest performing portfolio companies today. In a market awash with inefficiencies, and solutions dominated by incumbents whose products were launched more than 75 years ago, cofounders Daniel Werzberger and Chris Gardner’s product is a genuine saving grace for the auto industry.
Finding the New Car: Like all good customers, I browsed across Facebook Marketplace, Carsales, Gumtree and a couple of other listing sites. Pretty quickly I saw 30% price variances within models at similar mileage and similar condition. At least half of the consumers and dealerships listing their cars seemed to be lost without pricing guidance.
Organising Finance: I, like 90% of car buyers in Australia, decided to use finance for the new car. Despite being a loan secured against the value of the car, the lender gave an interest rate and repayment schedule without knowledge of how much I bargained down the price of the car, or any of the specific configurations that came with my specific purchase.
Insuring the Car: In taking out insurance on the car, I had to agree with the insurer on the insured value for the car to calculate premiums and to make future write-off decisions. In my case, the “market value” suggested by the insurer was 28% higher than the actual price I negotiated on the new car as new models were starting to flood the market.
Selling the Old Car: Being a 12-year old French car with a dent in the front bonnet and some undiagnosed engine issues, my expectations on a sale value were pretty subdued. Looking at the listing websites gave me some idea where to pitch the price. The dealer trade-in offer came in even lower. A day later, a car trader offered double the trade-in value (gleefully accepted).
Each of these steps is challenging for dealers, lenders and insurers with the normal ebbs and flows of automotive markets. Add in lingering impacts of COVID disruptions to supply chains, electric vehicles flooding markets globally, the emergence of online car dealerships, and increasing fragmentation of listing websites… and all of a sudden, these tasks have become a whole lot harder. Multiply this chaos by the 3m cars bought and sold each year in Australia alone and you get a sense of the dollars at stake from inaccurate or lacking data.
AutoGrab: A New Automotive Intelligence Platform
Understanding the inefficiencies described above in 1000x more detail, Daniel and Chris founded AutoGrab in 2020. They conceived a data intelligence platform based on live market data plus comprehensive factory configuration information to drag the industry into a new age of real-time pricing and availability intel. Having worked for a collective 20+ years in and around dealerships, the pair saw a compelling opportunity to uplift performance across the industry.
In AutoGrab, the team has built a suite of applications driven off actual transaction data, listing information, wholesale market intel and manufacturer configuration data to give customers the accurate information they need to run their businesses efficiently. Real-time, comprehensive, accurate and easy to use data, in products tailor made for each individual business. Think of a Bloomberg terminal, but for the auto industry.
Applying AutoGrab to my experience above and everything suddenly looks new age:
Finding the new car: Instead of dealerships relying on gut feel and manual searches, AutoGrab uses proprietary algorithms to suggest pricing based on specific registration-level configurations and alerts users in real-time when their stock is over or underpriced compared to the market.
Organising Finance: Lenders use AutoGrab to determine vehicle specific, real-time market valuations to determine credit decisions, interest rates and repayment schedules.
Insuring the car: Insurers use AutoGrab’s pricing algorithms to come up with valuations to determine premiums and guide write off decisions. Insurers leverage AutoGrab valuation reports in communicating write off-decisions with customers.
Selling the old car: Dealerships and traders use AutoGrab’s pricing algorithms to determine live market values to inform prices they can afford to purchase the vehicle at while maintaining profitability. AutoGrab informs dealers and traders of availability across the market to determine if they can get a similar vehicle elsewhere.
Post-launch, the business has rapidly scaled beyond 300 customers across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and the UK. Dealerships, wholesalers, lenders, insurers, fleet owners and manufacturers across these markets have flocked to AutoGrab’s products and have consistently increased usage post-purchase as the software becomes embedded in their day to day operations.
In the same vein, A-grade talent has jumped on board, with leading execs from the software, automotive and finance industries joining AutoGrab as it continues to accelerate.
At EVP we subscribe to Marc Andreessen’s view not to invest via a checklist. In fast growing technology businesses, there are almost always going to be reasons to say no, if you look hard enough. For AutoGrab though, every box on the hypothetical checklist had a big tick when we made the decision to partner up in late 2023. We saw a business with stellar financial performance, selling a novel mission critical solution for a large global underserved market, led by exceptional industry-insider founders and a very strong executive team. And that’s why we invested in AutoGrab.
My experience buying and selling a car over the past couple of weeks has brought the scale of the problem AutoGrab is tackling into sharper focus. I can’t wait to see how different it will all look when I next buy a car with all parties empowered by AutoGrab.