myoung8

I've seen a few friends go down this path, happy to introduce you if you're interested.

Contact info is in my profile.

When you buy a qualifying print-edition book from Amazon you can get the Kindle edition on Matchbook for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.*

* Applies to past, present, and future purchases.

If you're interested in a front-end position at SurveyMonkey, feel free to get in touch--we're hiring right now and, having joined recently, I can say it's an awesome place to work.

For what it's worth, this isn't the case at SurveyMonkey.

I'd say 90% of us are out of there by 5:30.

Bay Area, CA.

Come hack the auto industry at CarWoo! (YCS09)

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We are looking for an awesome Rails developer to help us take the online auto industry by storm. You'll join a great engineering and design team that's working hard to bring car-buying into the 21st century. The features you create will help turn the mostly terrible experience of buying a new car into a wonderful experience for our customers. Responsibilities

Work with Michael, Erik, Scott, Rimas, Tim, Andrew, and Patrick to create a world class set of products. We're a small team (just 5 engineers and 2 designers), but we work smart and get a lot done. Here's some of the cool stuff we're working on right now: a queuing system to optimize our operations across the country, an iOS app, and a stealth web crawler.

We do story-driven development, so you'll get the chance to work on any or all of this stuff if you so choose.

Qualifications

- Deep knowledge of Rails and everything that goes along with it (MVC, REST, relational database design/SQL)

- Solid grasp on modern web application design using Javascript, HTML, CSS

- Experience with version control systems (we use Git/Github)

- Solid testing methodologies and willingness to write comprehensive tests before release

You get extra bonus points for:

- Extensive Javascript experience outside of JQuery (e.g. Backbone)

- Ability to write complex SQL

- Understanding of good RDBMS design. Experience optimizing queries.

- Experience with memcached, sphinx, and nginx

- Story-driven development

- Web service/API development (REST)

- Experience with iOS development (Objective-C)

- Ability to play ping-pong skillfully and/or drive a go-kart furiously

Perks

- Full Benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k)

- 17 days of PTO (vacation)

- $5,000 to buy anything you want to get your work done (must include an Apple computer of some sort)

- A substantial amount of equity in the company

If you're interested, send an email with your résume and something interesting about yourself to michael@carwoo.com.

We're based in Silicon Valley, but if you live outside the Valley, we still really want to talk to you (we'll pay for your flight, hotel, and meals when you come interview with us).

Consistency of (beautiful) hardware design. Existing ergonomic keyboards are just plain ugly and it's a shame to pair them with Apple devices.

Agreed. An ergonomic mouse would be great too. Apple's mouse is beautiful, but it's one of the worst possible designs in terms of ergonomics.

I think it's a mistake to categorize all web startups as belonging to the "web startup" industry.

Even though we (CarWoo! YCS09) are a web startup, we see ourselves primarily as a company that plays in the automotive industry. All of our key metrics are highly-correlated with the automotive industry, not with what Techcrunch writes on any given day.

While a lot of YC startups' metrics ebb and flow with the goings on of the echo chamber, many do not.

It's not classic, but it is a diversified portfolio. YC invests in startups across all industries--automotive, mobile, health, financial, entertainment, etc.--which presumably is less risky (lower variance in returns) vis-a-vis just investing in one sector.

This isn't generally the case anymore--funding rounds these days tend to assign a 1X liquidation preference to both common and preferred shares, so assuming that a company gets acquired for more than its valuation, you shouldn't need to adjust EV down.

Thanks for the shout-out Sachin! Minor detail, but important: CarWoo! doesn't handle CPO yet, only new (current model-year) cars.

You're already ahead of the pack just by realizing that, though. Good luck to you. Feel free to reach out if you want any help.

Very little risk has been taken out until you've found product/market fit. Unfortunately, ideation and fundraising don't eliminate risk, they're the easy parts.

erik, maybe you should give them a clue where to start...

The first-mover's Achilles heel, though, is that you're the one who has to affect behaviorial change, which is the hardest part about building a company that is trying to fundamentally change the way people, well, behave.

That's a good point, thank you.

We have a VP Biz Dev, which is a totally different role. He's responsible for creating a pipeline of deals with big companies like KBB, AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc. It's a process that moves incredibly slowly.

We're looking for someone who can help us drive a lot of traffic right now and in ways that aren't necessarily traditional.

Sorry about that! Let me address your questions one-by-one:

1. We'll consider this. However, the vast majority of our users already know what model they want (i.e. they've done their research before using CarWoo!)

2. Same.

3. Split tests don't lie.

4. Actually, you're paying for the privilege of us keeping your information anonymous from 10 dealers and only giving it to the one dealer you want to work with after you've vetted them all through our app (i.e. we save you from spam), among many other benefits we provide, such as better prices from competition.

5. We have a 100% Happiness Guarantee and we're not afraid to use it.

6. Sorry about that, we use a 3rd-party service called SnapEngage, I'll have to look into this.

7. Some statistics for the analytically-inclined:

- CarWoo! buyers save an average of over $3000 off MSRP (but this is meaningless without context) - CarWoo! buyers save an average of $450 more than any other car-buying service (Costco, AAA, USAA) - For Minis, CarWoo! buyers save an average of about $500 off MSRP (relatively low, but Mini dealers generally aren't that willing to negotiate on price)

Thank you for your comments. Please let me know if you have any other questions or if you'd like a coupon to use CarWoo!

Unlike most other marketplaces, we're fortunate that we can build the network in an ad-hoc fashion.

Essentially, every time a buyer pays us, we reach out to just the dealers in that person's immediate area and get them to sign up. It's surprisingly easy because we come to them with a buyer who has paid money to help them buy a car that the dealer who's on the phone has on his lot.

Increasingly, though, as volume increases and dealers become more aware of CarWoo!, we don't even need to call.

Cartelligent is similar in the sense that it provides a very convenient way to buy a new car. They are a lot more hands-on than CarWoo! (in fact, they are a broker, while CarWoo! is not), so the buyer won't ever actually talk to a dealer and Cartelligent usually will deliver your car to your house for you. However, it costs at least an order of magnitude more than CarWoo! ($500+ vs. $49).

Given that their business model doesn't scale very well, they've never expanded out of California, and only recently (after being around for 10+ years) expanded out of Northern California. CarWoo!, on the other hand, can help buyers anywhere in the US.

You don't tell the media about it. Or ask them not to write about it. Launch is a loaded word nowadays. To be very specific, it was a product launch, not a media launch.

We only do new cars right now, we'll be getting to used in the near future, including private-party in all likelihood.

It's very difficult to give an average price on a car since there is so much variation and there are so many nuances to each car.

What I can say is that, on average, we save buyers over $3000 off the sticker price of the car. The range of savings is $-6101 to $16,205 (for a car that was very difficult to find and one that the dealer clearly wanted to move, respectively).

I can't knowledgeably comment on pricing by location right now, but we'll be releasing some cool data around that in the near future.

It wasn't really an uphill battle at all.

Due to the way dealers are compensated (i.e. on volume for the most part), their first priority is simply to sell a car (irrespective of how much margin they make). Thus, a highly-qualified CarWoo! buyer on their doorstep is a very attractive prospect.

Further, we don't cut into dealers' margins as much as you'd think. Not all buyers' first priority is price. A lot of the time it's fit (i.e. the car has the right options, color, etc.) and a good relationship with the dealer. Buyers can use CarWoo! to play hardball if they want, but, for example, the vast majority never even use the counter-offer tool.

The pitch to the dealer is pretty simple: "We've got a buyer in your area who's looking for <car description>. She's paid us 50 bucks to help her through the car-buying process so you know that she's highly qualified. She wants to buy a car in the next week. Would you be interested in making her an offer through our website? It's completely free for you to sign up, it's free to make her an offer, and we won't even charge you if you sell her a car!"

How could you say no to that? :)

Unfortunately, you'd also:

- get spammed by those dealers in a heartbeat, for 2-12 months after submitting the lead, even if you end up buying a car!

- have to manage the negotiations over email, with at least 3 dealers if you want to be sure you're getting a good price (clearly possible, but not easy)

- have to compare non-standardized "quotes", some of which are nothing more than a one-liner to the effect of "I'll sell you a 2011 Honda Accord for $22,390" with no mention of options

- convince each dealer that another dealer gave you a better offer

- go through a lot more back-and-forth than is necessary (to give each dealer the same feedback, to get them to lower their prices, etc.)

If you've never used the lead system for buying a car, I encourage you to try it with a fake email address and phone number so you can see how bad it is.

Some sites will sell your information not just to car dealers, but to mortgage companies, insurance companies, etc. It's not a pleasant experience.

At the end of the day, though, some people prefer not to pay for convenience and that's totally fine.

However, if you're hesitant because you think you might not get what you want, I encourage you to check out our 100% Happiness Guarantee:

http://carwoo.com/guarantee

We're very serious about making sure each customer is happy at the end of the day and if they're not, they get their money back. No questions asked. It's only fair.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "problem" with a our service. Some people prefer to do things on their own, some prefer the convenience that CarWoo! provides.

At the end of the day, if you try to do it yourself, you'll spend a lot more time (especially if you drive to a few dealerships).

Plus, if you do it yourself, you'd have to give your email address and/or phone number to a bunch of car dealers. And, don't take my word for it, take stjarnljuset's in the post above this, if you give a dealer your contact info, you'll be getting spammed for quite a while.

Just FYI, this has been fixed, we're now using radio buttons. You can see my response below as to why we were using checkboxes in the first place.

Precisely. There are a lot of other possible revenue streams, even if we never charge the dealers (which we'd like to avoid because we are a consumer advocate and don't want to be beholden to the dealers).

That's assuming that you can actually get 5-7 dealers to compete :)

There are few things to take into account:

1. We're working with real dealers behind the scenes, calling them if we have to. We don't use automated systems (not because it's impossible, but because it leads to a poor consumer experience). So there's a cost aspect to it.

2. Since dealers can see each others' offers, there's some competitive dynamics at play here too. The nth dealer to join often thinks that s/he has a worse chance of winning the deal because other dealers got there first. The effect varies proportionally (possibly exponentially) with the number of dealers participating. We don't want to promise 5-7 dealers if we can only realistically get 3-5.

3. We split-tested the value propositions for our plans, especially around # of dealers. What we've got now seems to work pretty well in terms of driving people to pick the plan we want them to pick (Plus).

4. We've found that with 3-5 dealers, buyers generally reach the local (in terms of geography) minimum w.r.t to the price of the car. Adding another 2 dealers doesn't get the buyer much and only wastes the dealers' time.

That said, we will continue to monitor this and test it. Thanks for your feedback!