Beepi

Beepi
Privately-held company
Industry E-commerce / Car dealer
Founded April 2013 (2013-04)
Headquarters Los Altos, California, United States
Key people
 Ale Resnik, Co-founder/CEO, Owen Savir, Co-founder/COO, and Fabrice Grinda, Executive Chairman
Products Secondary online marketplace for cars
Slogan Buying and Selling a Car. More than Improved. Elevated.
Website www.beepi.com

Beepi is a Los Altos, California company offering an online peer-to-peer marketplace for buying and selling used cars,[1] where transactions can be carried out entirely with a smart phone or a PC.[2] It was launched in April 2014.[2] [3]

Services

Beepi is a peer-to-peer marketplace.[4][5] Cars undergo an inspection and are listed on Beepi's website for a fixed sales price, with Beepi taking up to a 9% commission and buying unsold cars after 30 days.[6][7] While buyers do not personally inspect or test drive the car before purchase, they have a 10-day return window after delivery and a warranty.[6][8] Buyers have the option to pay Beepi in bitcoin, direct debit, financing or credit cards.[2]

A 2014 market report on the intersection of the internet and consumer interaction with the automobile industry by Capgemini, a research firm, found that about one third of Americans and two-thirds of Chinese surveyed said they would purchase an automobile online.[1]

History

Beepi was co-founded by CEO Ale Resnik and COO Owen Savir in April, 2014; the service was initially available only in the San Francisco area.[2] Resnik said that he was inspired to create Beepi after a negative experience with a used car that he purchased while a student at MIT.[9]

Beepi raised a $5 million A round in April 2014, led by Jeff Brody of Redpoint Ventures and including angel investors from the tech industry.[10] The company announced a Series B investment of $60 million in October, 2014 at a valuation of $200M,[11] and estimated that its annual revenue would be $15M.[2] By that time it had expanded to Los Angeles and San Diego.[2]

In December 2014 it raised an additional $12.7 million from three investors, mostly to clean up its capitalization table by buying out early investors who had invested relatively small amounts.[12]

In April 2015 the company opened an office in Phoenix, the first city outside of California in which it had offices. As of that time, people could use Beepi in 200 cities, but delivery was free only in California and Arizona.[13]

In August 2015, the company raised $70 million in equity and debt funding at a valuation of about $500 million after co-founder and CEO Ale Resnik told the Wall Street Journal in May he expected to raise more than $300 million “monster round” of financing at a valuation over $2 billion. [14] In January 2016 Resnick announced that Beepi had raised $70M in late 2015, in a round led by China's largest domestic automobile maker, SAIC Motor; he attributed the shortfall from his $300M projection to turmoil in the fundraising markets. The round brought the total raised by Beepi to $150M.[15]

In December 2015 Ally Financial and Beepi announced a partnership in which Ally will offer financing for buyers in the Beepi marketplace.[16]

As of February 2016 Beepi's advisory board included Larry Summers and Jim Messina.[17]

Competitors

As of August 2015, Beepi's competitors included Carvana, Shift (business), and Vroom.[18]

References

  1. 1 2 Manjoo, Farhad (April 22, 2015). "An Online Tune-Up for the Used-Car Marketplace". The New York Times. Retrieved April 22, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Chapman, Lizette (October 7, 2014). "Beepi raises $60 million to sell used cars to the smart". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  3. ↑ Shieber, Jonathan (10 December 2015). "Buy A Car On Your Phone With The New Beepi App". TechCrunch. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  4. ↑ Hanft, Adam (23 May 2014). "Finally Someone Is Sending Car Salesmen to the Junkyard: An Interview with Ale Resnik, Co-Founder of Beepi.". Huffington Post. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "50 Companies That May Be the Next Start-Up Unicorns". The New York Times. 23 August 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
  6. 1 2 Del Rey, Jason (15 April 2014). "Beepi Could Be the Car Buying Site We’ve Been Waiting For". Re/Code. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  7. ↑ Lawler, Ryan (5 September 2014). "Peer-To-Peer Auto Marketplace Beepi Adds A ‘Prime’ Option, Now Shipping To 140 Cities". TechCrunch. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  8. ↑ della Cava, Marco (April 8, 2015). "Beepi brings Uber-like ease to used-car shopping". USA Today. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
  9. ↑ "MIT Sloan Newsroom". MIT.edu. MIT. October 31, 2014. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ Brody, Jeff (April 5, 2014). "Redpoint Ventures". Redpoint. Redpoint. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Next Billion Dollar Start Ups". Forbes. 15 April 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
  12. ↑ Del Rey, Jason (December 30, 2014). "Used Car Site Beepi Lands $12 Million From Yuri Milner and AngelList’s Largest Ever Investment". Re/Code. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  13. ↑ Tishin, Donkersley (10 April 2015). "Beepi expands to Phoenix – interview with CEO Alejandro Resnik". AZ Tech Beat. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
  14. ↑ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/20/investors-strike-back-on-silicon-valley-valuations/
  15. ↑ Rao, Leena (21 January 2016). "China's Biggest Automaker Just Invested In A Used Car Startup". Fortune. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  16. ↑ Dexheimer, Elizabeth (16 December 2015). "Ally to Finance Used Cars Bought Online With Beepi Partnership". Boomberg Business. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  17. ↑ Logan, Bryan (1 February 2016). "This guy was so frustrated about buying a lemon that he vowed to revolutionize used cars". Business Insider. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  18. ↑ Jerry Hirsch for the Los Angeles Times. August 2, 2015. Cutting Edge Virtual used-car dealers gain traction

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.