Sam and Shaan break down how CarEdge — a car-buying service started by a father-son YouTube duo — grew to $10M/year in revenue in roughly two years. They cover the car broker model, how the YouTube audience built the business, and riff on other great parent-child business partnerships like Missouri Star Quilt.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
The CarEdge Origin Story [00:00:00]
Sam: So the story of this business is that it was started by a father-and-son duo. The father’s name is Rey, the son is Zach. The father basically managed car dealerships for years and he was like, “I know the ins and outs.” And his son, I think, was 24 or 25 at the time. His son always wanted to start an internet business and he also liked YouTube. He was like, “Hey Dad, what if I just asked you some questions on YouTube — like how you properly negotiate at the car dealership, or how much profit car dealerships make so we know better what to ask for?”
Shaan: Love it. Gonna work.
Sam: Yeah. And within — I think something like eight weeks — they got 13,000 followers on their YouTube page. They were like, “We were going to buy all these fancy cameras but then we just grabbed our iPhones and made it kind of janky, and people kind of liked it.” It was during the pandemic so people were watching a lot of that stuff. And so they parlayed that into starting a business called CarEdge.
What CarEdge Does [00:01:30]
Sam: So if you go to caredge.com — what’s it say? Do you see the headline?
Shaan: Yeah, it says “Your personal car shopper is here. No hassle, always fair prices.”
Sam: So basically they will help you buy a car. The way it works is there’s this thing called an auto broker or a car broker. I think you got your car from a friend of ours who’s a car broker. The industry is typically mom-and-pop. A lot of times if you Google “car broker New York City,” you’re going to land on some mom-and-pop website. You get on the phone or send an email to this person, tell them what type of car you want, and they have relationships with tons of dealers. You pay them a fee — $500 to $2,000 — and they typically go buy the car for you. The savings you get on the price of the car is usually better than the fee you pay, and they do all the negotiating so it’s not uncomfortable. Cool.
Sam: What these guys did is they took a start-up-y internet vibe and created a nice website for it. You can search different cars — or rather, they have a variety of products. One is like $50 or $80 a month and they give you tons of information, like a database on what the profit margin is on different cars so you can go negotiate yourself. Or you can spend $1,000, tell them the car you want, and they go buy it for you. They’ll even organize it to get shipped to you. They do all the coordination. And if you don’t save at least $1,000, you get your money back.
The YouTube Channel and the Numbers [00:03:45]
Sam: They built this massive business. If you go to their YouTube page, I think they now have 600,000 subscribers. It’s this really cute dynamic between a father and son — all the pictures on the site are like the dad giving the son a noogie. Just wholesome. And that father-and-son dynamic for the brand makes you like them a lot.
Sam: There were a bunch of car podcasts, but what they described wanting to do — they probably have no idea who we are, but it’s what you and I do. Just kind of riffing, a little less professional. You’re the father, I would assume. You’re older than me — you be the dad.
Shaan: You know how there was that big viral thing where it was like PewDiePie versus T-Series — who can have the most subscribers on YouTube?
Sam: Yeah.
Shaan: So these guys currently have 533,000 subscribers. Your boys have 529,000. We are 4,000 subscribers behind CarEdge. I’m just going to leave that there for our loyal army — who doesn’t want to see us lose to this father-son car-buying duo. Go to YouTube and subscribe.
Sam: All right. Yeah. Back to them — this business is now doing roughly $10 million a year in revenue. He has a video where he breaks down the revenue. He pulls up their QuickBooks and you can see it, but he blurs out the numbers. I messaged him and was like, “Hey, I have this podcast —” and he goes, “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” I said, “Can you just tell me the numbers so I can talk about it?” And he did.
Sam: I think it’s only two or three years old, and it seems like a great business. I honestly thought it’d be almost bigger, because looking at the traffic, they get almost two million visitors a month to their site. That is a huge amount of traffic for this type of business. I’m extremely impressed.
Using a Car Broker — Have You Done It? [00:06:00]
Shaan: Is this something you normally do when you buy cars? Use car brokers?
Sam: I haven’t, but I’ve heard of them. We actually talked about it years ago — we brought this up in one of the early episodes. I’ve never actually used it, but I remember the last time I bought my car I was in the dealership for like four hours signing paperwork, wiring money — it took forever. I was like, “I’m never doing this again.” So I started Googling car brokers. That’s how I found these guys.
Shaan: Were they YouTube first?
Sam: Yeah, audience-first. YouTube first.
Zach’s Background and the Blog [00:07:00]
Shaan: Did they even plan to launch this as a service, or did it start as just “let’s make a YouTube channel”?
Sam: The kid Zach has a blog where he’s been writing since he was 22. Previously he ran some small information business doing like $150,000 in revenue. You can see him blogging as he goes. He’s like, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to make money on the internet and start an internet company.” You can see he had two or three businesses that weren’t huge or anything, but it was very promising for a 21-year-old.
Sam: And I have a feeling — I clicked around on their LinkedIn — I think the mother passed away from cancer. So I think there was this feeling where Zach was like, “I want to be with my father more. Let’s see if we can do something together.”
Sam: He’s got cool blog posts. Getting your first customers is really hard, and he talks about getting their early customers. Another one is “From 10,000 to 14,000 subscribers in three weeks — here’s what we learned.” I haven’t read these yet but I’m just looking at the titles. These are cool.
Shaan: I’m going to check these out.
Sam: Yeah, this is a cool kid. I think he’s only 25. Just a really promising business. On some of the blog posts he talks about how he’s now projecting financials so he can decide when to hire people. You’re actually seeing him do this in real time. He’s not in our world, so it’s a really fun business to pay attention to and see what this guy builds.
Father-Son and Parent-Child Business Duos [00:09:00]
Shaan: Isn’t that so cool — father-son businesses? Or just parent-kid, but not in the succession, hand-me-down type of way.
Sam: A couple examples of this. We had Al Don come on and talk about Missouri Star — the biggest quilting store on the internet. It’s Al and his mom. Same thing: YouTube channel where she makes content, she’s the star, and Al was like, “Cool, I’ll figure out the internet and e-commerce part of this, and let’s make this a thing.” This is a nine-figure business that sells quilt supplies to moms across the country. It’s amazing.
Sam: And Al does a thing that I love. When he refers to his mother, he doesn’t say “my mom.” He goes, “I was just hanging out and Mom wanted to quilt.” Like, when they use “Mom” as a proper noun — I love that. Whenever I hear someone do that.
Shaan: Yeah. Jenny.
Sam: So it’s Al and Jenny. They created this business, and her YouTube videos are great. I’ve randomly watched them even though I have no interest in quilting — but I’m interested in her videos because she’s so wholesome and so good on camera. Great example.
Sam: We also had the guys from FarmCon and AWAG — same thing, father and son doing business together, but not in a legacy “you can take over my business” way. They started new businesses together. I just think that’s so cool. If my kids want to do something like that, that’ll be a blast.