Selling a car is a pain. You can take the easy route and use services like Carvana, but you may wind up with thousands of dollars less than your car is worth. Or, you could hope for more by going to a dealership, but the dealer’s offer can vary wildly depending on what they’re looking for, never mind the extra time and effort on your part.
A Los Angeles-based startup called Bidbus has spent the last few years trying to combine the best of those options, making it so sellers don’t need to leave their couch to get dealership-level offers. The company has created a digital marketplace where multiple dealers can bid on a car, a process that results in an average offer that’s about $2,000 to $3,000 higher than what Carvana offers, according to Bidbus’ founders.
Now, looking to scale beyond its initial markets of California and Texas, the startup has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by early-stage mobility fund Ibex Investors. The round also saw participation from Mucker Capital, FJ Labs, Motley Fool Ventures, DataPoint Capital, Walter Ventures, and the Car Dealership Guy’s Yossi Levi.
Bidbus’ co-founder and CEO Duke Yan told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview that he came up with the idea after years spent buying and selling cars on his own. When he tried to help his mom get rid of her car, the offers from dealers were insultingly low, so he put them in a group chat. To his surprise, buyers started bidding up the price.
“Used-car affordability is not a financing problem. It’s a market efficiency problem. Consumers lack real price discovery for trade …