I want to add in typical provocative car dealership guy nature. I want to say this very bluntly. Do car dealers hate you? Co-pilot or me personally? Maybe we can focus on Co-pilot.
What's up everyone? This is car dealership guy. You're listening to the car dealership guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. Let's get into today's episode.
Pat Ryan is founder and CEO of Co-pilot, an AI-powered car buying app that's helping consumers navigate their car bridges. Prior to Co-pilot, Pat co-founded and sold two auto tech startups to ACV auctions.
Pat Ryan是Co-pilot的创始人兼CEO,Co-pilot是一款由人工智能驱动的汽车购买应用程序,有助于消费者在汽车市场中导航。在创办Co-pilot之前,Pat曾与人合伙创立并将两个汽车科技创业公司卖给ACV拍卖行。
In this conversation, we spoke about the dynamics of family entrepreneurship, building and exiting two startups to the same company, simplifying car search for consumers, innovating with AI, and how to leverage Co-pilot to find a great cardio.
But before we get into the show, please take two seconds to subscribe or follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. It's completely free and will help ensure that you never miss an episode.
All right, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Pat Ryan.
好的,让我们开始吧。这是我和帕特·瑞安的对话。
All views of car dealership guy and guests on this podcast are solely their opinions. None of the views expressed should be treated as financial advice. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
All right, we got Pat Ryan on the pod. Pat, welcome. Good to hear.
好的,我们请来了Pat Ryan参加这个节目。欢迎,很高兴听到你的声音。
I got to ask you, the first thing I noticed when I was, I did some research on you in your background, Chicago. I mean, what are they putting the water in Chicago? What's the deal with everyone in automotive, all these powerhouses coming from Chicago? Give us your background in story.
Well, I was working in more traditional industry in the early 2000s. And we were working a lot with data and analytics. And we saw what an impact that had. One of the stories we used to tell was that the folks at Walmart were so good with data and analytics that on a Memorial Day weekend, based on how hot it was, they could tell you how much purple Gatorade they needed to stock or of every flavor of Gatorade. You know, if you went to a 7-Eleven back then, it was all the junkie flavors you didn't like were the only ones left. But they had every single flavor and color perfectly predicted based on the weather and everything that was happening.
We were trying to bring that to business. And one of the things that we looked at was, so we said, you know, the largest retail vertical is automotive. But no one's ever really done what Sam Walton did. And one of the things that we always loved was, you know, people think of Sam Walton and Walmart, obviously his big box retail and all this.
But he's actually, when he was originally inducted into the business Hall of Fame, was for the use of data analytics and logistics. And so we always thought that was really interesting, that ability to predict all the Walmart stores, used to have satellite dishes.
So they could have this real-time data transfer. And so our thought was, how do you bring that to other industries? And I'd been around the auto business a little bit, but I wasn't an insider. And we started a company called First Look. And the idea was to bring data-driven analytics, kind of what Walmart did, but for the auto industry. And when we started it, I actually went to go try to sell car max. I went to Austin, Liggett.
And it was an early SaaS product. And I said to Austin, I showed him everything. And it was a great conversation. He's going on and on. He's asking all his great questions. He's almost finishing my sentences. And I'm like, this could be the greatest, first major customer ever. Because he completely gets it. And I said at the end, I'm a...I know sales training. So I ended with a terrible closing question which is, what do you think? And he looks at me and he says, I hate it.
And I said, what do you mean you hate it? We've been talking for two hours. This has been great. You totally get this. He said, I've had circuits city city spend 10 years and $25 million building this for us. And you're going to sell it to my competitors for $1,000 a month. That's not good for me.
And so that was kind of my induction to the business. But then I never, it took me years to meet somebody else like Austin Liggett. It took me years to find because the industry, what Austin understood, was this ready. And so being my first experience in the industry was trying to introduce something at a time when people is the mid 2000s, when people were still trying to think of everything as gut. I know what a car is. I know what a car is worth. I know what a car should be priced at. And so we were ahead of the curve, which sounds like a self-congratulatory thing, but it's actually purgatory.
It's not hell because you're trying to sell something that people aren't ready to adopt yet. And so you've got to search for those early adopters. And we eventually got there, but it was really hard because nobody wanted to be Walmart of a car business back then. Of course, it's evolved a lot since then, but that was my introduction to the car business was trying to sell something that people was like, it worked. They made a lot more money. But it was like, tell them to eat right an exercise. It's not popular to say no ice cream, no pizza. Like I was selling kale.
What was the initial product for you? So you mentioned you spoke on automotive, huge vertical. Was it just data and analytics and assisting? Yeah. So it was called first look.
And it was basically the original idea was that we brought in the same kind of inventory management car max did or Walmart did. It was stocking. It was appraising and it was pricing. And then it also helped you figure out what to sell. And the original idea, so the original launch of the business was actually the morning was in Washington DC because we were going to, our early monetization model wasn't fast.
Our early monetization model was going to be getting dealers to trade cars to each other. It was going to be like a dealer round table watch. Where we would have all the data, we would know what they needed to stock, what they needed to sell. We would say, okay, our dealership guy needs to pick up three accords and this guy needs two BMWs and we'll put you guys together and facilitate that.
So we did it actually in a conference center in suburban Washington DC and it was scheduled start at 10 a.m. on September the 11th, 2001. Well, by the time 10 o'clock game, they shut down DC. They were shutting down. They all got in a van and drove back to Chicago over, you know, basically straight. And it was very tough.
And then eventually we had dropped that revenue model and we, that's when I'm done with Austin. And eventually we got Hendrick was our first big client. But it was a very hard thing to sell data driven insights to dealers at that moment in time because that wasn't the culture of the business.
I got to tell you one thing I noticed about you as I was preparing for this episode is, it seems like you keep a very low profile. And look, as an outsider, you have a very impressive track record and background. You've exited two companies to the same company, which we'll get into in a bit. You sat on the board of Penske, I believe, you know, up until recently, you know, you've been around in some really great rooms. And I'm sure you've just been exposed to a lot in the business.
Tell us a bit about, you know, getting to that position. And also, you know, I'm really interested to hear about these two acquisitions to ACV auctions. So, let's start there. Yeah, so the first thing is, is so interestingly, my dad is an entrepreneur. So I come from an entrepreneurial family. He actually, his first business was called Pat Ryan Associates, eventually Ryan insurance. And he was credited with creating what is sort of, he's in the automotive insurance, all the things, he's in the automotive hall of fame for inviting the F&I office.
告诉我们一些,你是如何达到那个位置的。我也很想听听ACV拍卖会这两个收购交易的情况。让我们从这里开始。首先,有趣的是,我的父亲是一位企业家。所以我来自一个企业家族。他的第一家企业叫做Pat Ryan Associates,最终演变成了Ryan Insurance。他被认为在汽车保险等领域创造了F&I办公室,并进入了汽车名人堂。
And I was going to say, I think it's an understatement to call him an entrepreneur. As far as I read the founder of AOD, is that right? Undervan. That's unbelievable. Now he's got a new 73 founder, new public company, which he took public last year called Ryan Specialty. When we went to the New York stats change for the IPO, I said, the chairman of the stocks change was there.
And I said, my dad's 86 right now. And I said, do you get many 84 year olds? He said, Pat, we don't give any 64 year olds, let alone 84 year olds, let alone, someone has done it two, three times like this. So he knew the auto business, but I was too young by the time he really started moving into what became man, I was really what I was old enough to really understand what's going on. So I didn't know the automotive side of the business much, but in 1968, he gave a talk and a 20 group in Montreal, Canada, and it was Pat Ryan's associates.
And he had a handful of associates. And it was early in the business and the sky walks up from Philly area. And he says, hi, I'm the general manager and part owner of a Chevy store in Philly. I love what you said, can we go and go drink or get some weed? I'd love to talk to you more about it. And that guy was Roger Penske.
And so my dad and Roger are these two guys who've gone on to create these large public companies, the global companies, but they knew each other when they were nobody. And they invested in each other. And so it was a great, so it's a kind of a great story that these guys grew up together. And they're still doing it. They're three months apart in age. And so in the 90s, when I was starting to work, I got out of grad school and I was starting to work.
I had done some work before on automotive supply. We had been an investor. My dad wasn't able to do it at war because Ann was global. It's 150 countries. So he was traveling all the time. So Roger invited me to join the board to represent us. And the privilege of getting to sit around a table, learn from a guy like Roger Penske has been unbelievable. I spent 25 years doing it. I have the greatest respect for him for his organization. And I tried to be a sponge because there are only so many iconic people in any industry that are probably a handful in any industry like Roger Penske. And maybe he's Elon Musk is of our generation kind of thing. That's it. And so that was just, it was incredible. And you learn about how does the guy build what's there. And you also learn they don't get everything right. Yet they go on to incredible success. And so you learn from both what they get right and what they learn from. And it was fantastic. Happy to talk more about it. But it was incredible.
It sounds like an incredible story. And I want to break the normal flow of my podcast for one second because typically I'll start with background going to more B2B and with consumer. But I would ask you a more personal question. What's it like to grow up at a household like that with a father that is so incredibly successful? And you yourself obviously have been just tremendously successful. What has that been like? What was it like to be raised in that type of household?
You know, it's funny because it's different than people expect because wealth is a former celebrity. So people see my dad on the Forbes list or these kinds of things. And everybody focuses on, you know, is it like some TV show? And it's not really because he's an entrepreneur. So when I was young, you know, he wasn't what he is today. And so you're sort of there along for the journey. And so you have this, it was different each decade of my life, you know. When I was in high school college, nobody ever heard of my dad, you know, in the general public. But were the core values the same at all times?
That's the thing is it's really, I think there are three big things. One is, you know, as a father, he's been a great father and a great mentor. But as a businessman, he also is always, you know, we I grew up around the table talking about what his strategy was, what he was doing, why he was doing it. We still do that today. And one of the things that's really interesting for my dad is is that, you know, I went to grad school, but I've learned a thousand X from him as he goes through these things, you know, kind of getting a ride shotgun and see what he's doing and learn from what he's doing. And it's been, you know, it's been an incredible journey.
But it's also the kind of journey where, you know, he really is happy to share. And I would say I've never been able to buy a stock because I always have some information that, you know, it wouldn't be appropriate. So for me, it's if you look at my dad and growing up there, one seeing his values have always been the same no matter how much he had, no matter how well known he was, you know, the financial none of that really mattered. He was always a family guy first, family mattered first and foremost. He was always very committed, you know, my dad as a view, which is think no impure of thoughts and you won't get yourself in trouble. Like don't even entertain the idea and don't be around people who would entertain the idea of being in any way doing things across lines and boundaries that you've never been comfortable with.
So I see him do that and I've seen others who cut corners who were, you know, maybe less willing to do so and really see people talk about playing the long game. But you have to be willing to ride the ups and the downs and there are times where things aren't going well and you could try to spin it, but his view was always be candid, take your lumps, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and come back and that's the nature of being a public company CEO for decades. You're gonna have ups, you're gonna have downs and you know, they lost almost 200 people in 9-11. They were the top floor of World Trade Center too. He was supposed to be there that morning and he was actually over the Atlantic and you know, you look at how he handled that and you know, people first, they did more further people than almost anybody. College scholarships take care of the family's lifetime health insurance for anybody who died and then they were really committed to that and then Wall Street punished them for having high expenses and they say, okay, well, this is right by our people. We got to do right by our people. You know, we want to do right by our shareholders, but our shareholders get what they get, get the benefits they get because of our people. We always got to stand by our people first and foremost.
So it's been a journey like that of a hundred of those things, maybe not all is big and profound, but a hundred of them. Absolutely and very commendable.
这是一段像那种经历了一百件事情的旅程,也许并不全是重要而深刻的事情,但总共有一百个。绝对值得称赞。
I want to go back to, you mentioned earlier, just you know, riding the ups and downs and I found it incredible that you managed to have, you know, you launched an incubator, which I'd love to hear more about, you know, the startup studios really, you know, found and built companies, but you sold two companies to ACV auctions. Can you tell us about that journey getting to that point?
Yeah, you know, I think there's always the thought that, I think there's always the thought that, as you get to a certain scale and size, like how far can you take this? And you know, lots of people. And what I learned is that we have very good products. So when our products at Henrik and Lithia, which were our two biggest customers, go ahead and get challenged by competitors, I was always very proud of the fact that our dealerships outperformed the ones using our competitor software. Because you feel ultimately you want the people who are loyal to you, your customers will have loyalty to be successful and to be more successful. You want them to really, you know, feel the benefit of the loyalty. And I really felt good about that.
嗯,你知道,我认为人们总会想到,当企业达到一定规模和大小时,如何才能将其发展多远呢?很多人都有这个想法。但我学到的是,我们有非常优秀的产品。当我们的两个最大客户 Henrik 和 Lithia 的产品受到竞争对手的挑战时,我总是为我们的经销商在使用我们的竞争对手软件的经销商中表现出色而感到自豪。因为最终你想要忠诚于你的人,你的客户拥有忠诚度,并且能获得成功和更大的成功。你希望他们真正感受到忠诚度的好处。我为此感觉很好。
I really liked our first look business and we had our max business, which is sort of digital retailing, digital marketing. And it was really focused on that consumer dealer experience. So like we had a BMW and GM endorsements and we would do a sales tool that salespeople could use to be more consumer friendly. You know, a lot of times on new cars, they might be well trained, but every use car is different. They didn't know how to tell the difference in the cars. We gave them an app in their pocket that told them everything from across the internet about that car. And so seeing that, you know, we loved our products and we were proud of what our customers achieved.
That being said, you know, there's a time the industry's been consolidating significantly. We were with some of the biggest players like Hendrik and Lithia. But at the same time, what I also learned is that it was harder for us to grow as a mid-sized company. And so one of the reasons I decided to sell them was you wanted the business to have the right home. And so I sold the businesses to ACV because ACV is a very hot growing business. It really is trying to expand its set of offerings. And so for our team.
And what was the difference from first look to max digital? We sold them around the same time. We sold them around the same time. But in terms of the actual product, the product itself, what was the difference?
Oh, so first look was the inventory management. And max digital was the digital retailing, like, you know, the everything in your pocket for a salesperson to be an expert. We also made their ads better on places like cars.com and AutoTrader and that sort of thing. So it was all about building consumer-centric ads and sales processes.
And now these companies that you founded, are you pulling off a Jack Dorsey Elon Musk as CoCo? Or are you just the chairman? How is the structure of this actually work? How do you run two companies?
Yeah, it's a great question. So I started the first one and I had a deal to sell it. And it was too restricted. It was actually had a deal back then to sell it to deal a track in 2010. And I didn't. But I really wanted to go do something else, start something new. So I brought it as CEO to run it. And then in 2011, we started Max because we saw sales enablement is really the category. And we saw that salespeople, you know, often didn't have to do the research they needed to do to be knowledgeable on every car.
We would have people who worked for us. A lot of our people used to be car max buyers, where the people would not work with dealers. And they'd go to buy a car to dealership and someone would tell, oh, this is X trim. And the guy, our guy would say, I know it's not X trim. Like the guy would be making up stuff. You'd see salespeople making stuff up all the time. And we thought they're only making it up because they don't know. They're not trying to deceive the customer. They just, it's a lot of homework to have 100 cars and a lot.
I know the story of every car, particularly when it's outside of your franchise. You know, because not your franchise, how well do you know the trim is on the packages of other brands. And so that's where we got into this idea of sales and able. So 2011, I started max. It grew really fast, much faster than first look. And then what happened to me is, is I got it to a certain scale. I was on the board, but I had also been involved in founding a venture firm called Chicago Ventures and an incubator in Chicago called 1871. And I really felt like helping other entrepreneurs was something that I wanted to do. So I took some of the people who worked for us and they ran the businesses. Did a good job with it. But for me, I really liked the idea of, you know, I spent 10, 15 years at this point learning the startup world.
And so helping our ecosystem in Chicago, helping entrepreneurs, both through funding, being on boards, but also these incubators was something I spent a lot of time on, let's call it between 2013 and 2018. And I really love doing that. And so that became kind of a third, if you will, founding for me. And it was probably the right thing at the right time. I was probably burned out. I mean, being on the road calling on, you know, selling is a, it takes a lot out of you. And so we had people with fresh energy, it's like in football, they put a fresh line in and they needed somebody fresh in the game.
And so that was when I kind of stepped out of those businesses. We sold them during the pandemic very successfully. But we didn't, well, we ended up, I really that period of helping other entrepreneurs was a really fun and important for me. Because, you know, you learned a lot the hard way, you have a lot of parties you should show and feel like, God, I hope somebody else can learn this without having to go through everything I did to turn the hard one.
A hundred percent. And so throughout this process, you start another company, CoPilot. And I found it fascinating that, you know, you've been so committed to the automotive vertical, but that specifically that throughout everything you had going on, you're clearly the CEO of this company. So I wouldn't dig into that. What is CoPilot? What are you working on out? And why did you decide to go be CEO of another company, as opposed to, you know, point of management team or incubate it through your, through your firm?
Yeah, it's a great, great question. So a couple of things. First of all, I learned a community of these people. I really liked the creative process being an entrepreneur, leading a team, trying to help people solve problems. So that was one piece. I knew I wanted to go back and operate again and, and found something. Number one, number two, I founded Max. I really had the naive point of view and you'll appreciate this given your experiences that this would be, Max would be how we'd make the car dealership sales process consumers friendly.
But we had some great customers who did great things. But at Max, the number one, one of my great disappointments was that our number one requested feature for our sales tool. It's like a consumer walks into the dealership. It's a big touchscreen there that they can use our tool to like, so, shop themselves, right? The number one request we had from salespeople was, can you create a button where we can change the price? So somebody hasn't been online and I know that. I can raise the prices on all the cars. And I thought, well, that's terrible. And somebody didn't go on Latin, they came here because they trusted you. And if you're going to raise the price, what it made me realize is that given the nature of the sales process and given the nature of commission-based sales, it was going to be hard to get the industry to go really consumer friendly as a vendor because ultimately you're doing what you need to cut what your customers ask for.
So I actually took the technology, all the data stuff we had created at Max and I spun it out and created co-power. And the idea came from something very simple.
I think for people on Twitter you do is probably for your friends, which is we had all this data. We basically had built over just 10, 15 years, the best data platform for analytics, pricing, and cars. We have the original window stickers on $150 million of the 275 million cars out there, for example.
And so we got out there and what would happen is our friends would call us say, hey, who do you have all this data? Can you help me? So our people would get on the phone, they'd help their friend find the right car, they'd tell them why it's priced right, they'd do everything, they'd help figure out how to negotiate the best deal, they'd do all this.
And their friend would just say thank you, that was fantastic. And they'd say, you guys should really do that. We can't do that because our dealer customers wouldn't like it if we were in the business of using that data to negotiate with them.
And so that was the original co-pilot. It was people using all our data to help friends do it. And so we had the idea of like, if you want to make the car business consumer friendly, the consumer needs an advocate.
And one of the challenges that the listing sites have, and I like all the people who run them, but they're paid by dealers. And so they're limited in how far they can go without getting pushed back. And of course, true car is the ultimate example of that, which is as they started pushing too far, the dealers push back on them. And I don't think it's right to take money from people and then work against them.
So we started this thing, we won't take money from dealers. But the dealers get free leads from us to try to pass all the time. Division of co-pilot was how do you get your own expert, who knows everything about the car business, will do all the heavy lifting, all the research, search every dealer, analyze every car, rank everything for you.
So you're getting the most car for your money every time and you can buy with confidence. And you were talking to the guy in the software guy from Israel a couple of weeks ago, you were talking about that is co-pilot. Well, you guys were describing where that is exactly why I'm creating co-pilot.
I love what you were saying. Our name turns out to be a really prophetic one given where we're going with gender today. But that is exactly what the idea is. Everybody should have a co-pilot.
And some of our dealer friends are like, well, you know, but then you're teaching people how to, you know, be really great at this. And, you know, does that cut my profits? I said, no, if you're a dealer who prices a car well, who has a great car, who's trying to do the right thing, we have made that customer comfortable trusting that.
So now all of a sudden that customer doesn't come in and wear it because they know you're different because we've analyzed the market and said, you know, go to car dealership guy because that accord he has is great quality, one owner, no accidents. It has, it's really well priced. It's got great equipment. It's low mileage. It has all these other features.
And so the whole vision is that by helping consumers, we actually help the industry get more consumer centric because it rewards the people doing the right things. And that eventually will mean those people are more successful and either the other people will change or go away.
So I think the magic question that everyone's wondering, how do you make money? That's a great question. So the short answer is, is the secret to our cost side of our business, which is important to understand is, is we have, I took all my best engineers.
So I've got a 25 person team that does this, but it's like they're the best at automotive data. And we have a number of people who are really great at AI. So part of it is, is it doesn't, every customer we get, it doesn't cost us a dime more to serve a million people than a thousand people, or maybe it costs us a dime more, but very little.
So part of it is I've got a fixed cost business so that I don't have an increasing cost as we increase the number of people, which makes it easier to make money because if my, if it was marginal cost, it would run me out of business.
The answer is, is we make money. So 97% of our customers go to our site. We have almost too many people on similar web would tell you, almost two million people go to our site every month. That's doubled since December. So we're acquiring them for free.
And 97% of our customers will go to a dealer without the dealer ever knowing we were involved. 3% will go into our app and use it to help them across the way, but they stay with us. And so we might help them reconnects their loan when interest rates go down. We're not in that marketing more, but we were before.
We certainly, we primarily make money off insurance. So we have partnerships with different folks, including all state, helping people save money on their insurance. And over time, you know, we'll help them with more and more. But it's really that group that becomes our core, almost like an affinity group.
So our network becomes this group of people who they say, that was such a great experience. I want to stay with you, help me figure out everything else. And that's how we make money is by saving their money, because they know we're like fast flow, which is we're only going to make a little bit of money on them. You know, insurance person will make $500,000 on something.
We'll make $100, but we're fine with that because we're in the long term relationship with that consumer. And if we can pass along most of the savings to them, they'll be loyal to us. And that'll be a great long term partnership.
Two million visitors a month. Incredible number. How are these visitors finding you? Primarily through SEO today, and then word about our customers really love us. We have a 4.8 rating in the app store. And our customers really, they love us. I think they realized that we're on their side.
And there's something about that, just like I think a lot of things you've done out there tweeting. When you are transparent with people in a really constructive way, they trust you because you've earned their trust. And once you've earned people's trust, there's this sense of like they can relax and they can start to solve the problem.
Where a lot of people, I think in buying a car, have had a negative experience. And so they're locked up. They're nervous. They're just trying to not be taken advantage of. And having somebody you trust help you navigate the way, I think is really important.
So word of mouth is half our traffic. Wow. And then SEO has become really big because we are searching every dealer. We are analyzing for our customers. We are analyzing every car. And then we're ranking all of them. And we can rank them because the dealer's not paying us.
So the dealers who get high ranks love us and the dealers are low ranked. No one ever sees their cars. So they don't actually get hurt. But if we were getting paid by dealers, we could never rank them because they would be worried about and paying a thousand dollars a month. Why aren't you ranking me higher? And consumers like it because the listing sites have to show sponsored cars more prominently. We only show what's better for you.
Do you think you're leaving dollars on the table, especially from the dealers that are high ranking? Do you think you could monetize that cohort of dealers? I mean, and you're smiling. Looks like something you thought about.
Well, it's a great question. My board asked it a lot, of course, my address that question a lot. So you sound like one of my investors, for sure. You know, I would only want to do it in a way if it didn't take away from the independence that our customers trust.
Our members trust us. And that's the most valuable answer that we have. And I've been hesitant to do it. There's no question that we're under optimizing the monetization of what we have under monetizing what we have.
But, you know, it takes a lot of time to build trust, and you can burn it in a split second. So I respect the fact that they trust us, and I really want to be respectful and protective of that.
Yeah, look, I think I know the feeling, right? Because I am, I think what I take pride in is that I consistently try to share an unbiased perspective. And in certain cases, it was a great job. And it's hard. And frankly, in certain cases, I may piss off consumers, in certain cases, I may piss off some dealers. But you know, you're constantly tippy toeing on that fine line, because you want to, like you said, you want to earn that trust of the marketplace.
And so it's not an easy task. And I'm glad your board members are bringing up that question. I want to ask you another question, though, but how did you initially wedge into the market, right? So you had this idea, I just knowing the car, the listing, the car listing marketplace is very competitive.
And so how did you, how did you manage to wedge into this market? And how do you retain your spot and just what's such a saturated market? Or at least it feels like?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the first answer is it's hard. I mean, they're just in consumer in general. I mean, think in the last decade, how many consumer businesses in consumer Europe as this is a broken up? Not a lot.
I think there are two ways that we've done it. The first one is, is we early on, we were very successful on Facebook, actually, in getting that chicken egg problem solved with early users. And then I think the fact that we can position is independent, and we're not actually listening site, we're a search engine, we have a search engine.
So what we do different than a listing site is nobody sends us their inventory. We have a search engine, it's an automotive search engine. And we go find cars and here's the thing, is it's a win-win for dealers on two levels. One, if we find your car and it does well, you're going to get a free lead that's highly motivated. And if you don't do well, well, it's like you never saw us anyway. So there's no real downside to the dealer for us being a search engine. So we're really additive to them. Even though we're empowering consumers, not every dealer likes that, the good dealers do because they're like, hey, I worked hard to price this fairly, but you're giving me third party validation. So the good dealers, the consumer centric dealers trust that.
The other benefit we do that I would tell you that in the search engine, part of it is, is by being transparent with consumers, it's allowed us to counter position. You know, there's never a sponsored car. And people recognize that and we say how long the car has been online and they feel the dealer can't like the fact you told us they're on 123 days, but it builds that trust. But the other thing we do for dealers that nobody else does in pricing is we actually give dealers, we actually give the car full credit for what it has.
So for example, if you take a BMW, there's a lot of packages in BMWs that are factored into the trim. If it's a fully loaded BMW versus one of the same trim that's not that's called leather packaged as heated seats, it has a whole bunch of other really great pieces, we actually will reflect that in the market price, where a lot of those pricing tools out there don't. And so dealers a loaded car will get a fuller, fair price from us than it will from other third parties, because it's value to the consumer. I mean, if I can get $10,000 worth of packages for $5,000, that's a great buy.
So I think it's that trust, I think it's the fact that we're so different than everybody else that we don't take money and that we're independent has helped the word of mouth. And I think the Gennifer AI, like I picked the name CoPilot, we picked the name CoPilot for a reason. Our vision was always what I've heard you describe, which is the consumer needs that one stop shop. So we just had a hackathon here, all our engineers came into town, we had a hackathon, and we have some really exciting Gennifer AI things. We have a plug-in week submitted to the plug-in store right now. We have a working Gennifer AI in TCHPT into our product, because if you take our differentiated data and the independence, we're not afraid of what the results are, because the chips will fall where they may.
But if you have customers who might look bad, as dealers who are paying you, you need to be very, very careful. And so there's a liberation to being on the consumer side of the table only, which is we can just do the right thing, focus on that, and we'll do right by the consumer and the dealers who are doing the right thing to be rewarded. And the other ones will never hear of us. The women know we exist. You know, on that note, I just think that the next generation of car shopping is going to be wild.
I mean, I look at the Apple Vision announcement, right, the headset, and I think about shopping for a car, right, the first call it dealer or the first company that creates that app for dealers to be on the Apple Vision Pro and truly see, you know, like when Carvana came out with the 360 view, it was like, okay, wow, this is new. And then it got commoditized and every dealer pretty much has that now. And I just imagined this world where, like I said, you go on this website, you say just what you want, and maybe you don't know everything you want, maybe you know exactly what you want. It doesn't matter. But you state a prompt and boom, it pulls up on this just you know, augmented reality. You see the car, you spin it with your finger, and you see it in such fine detail that it truly takes the car shopping experience to the next level. I don't think that's I don't think that's a crazy world. I think that's going to happen. It's just a matter of time.
I think that's right. The other thing that's going to happen that we've been working on for quite a while, we call diagonal search, which is, okay, show me, you know, horizontal search is like, show me all the hinders or show me all the pickups. And you know, for vertical searches, you know, you go down the trail, you go down the in this class, and then you can go kind of across. But, but we call diagonal searches like, I need it. SUV with seven seats with, you know, captain's chairs, because I got a car seat in the way back that I got, I got it, my kids out of the back row in, I need to have cargo space. I need to have a good fuel mileage. And it's really important to me that it has, you know, high five star crash test ratings. What should I do with it?
Right? Because this is a generation of people who aren't car people, you know? And so I'm not a car guy in the sense that I don't know. I'm not, I don't collect cars. I don't have that sort of things.
But giving consumers a sense, I think it's all going to change. And if you think about it, you know, you have to question up the listing sites. Well, you know, those are the original classified ads. If you look at the big listing sites, cars.com was classified, that was classified ventures, you know, Auto arm, auto trader.com was, you know, from the auto trader magazine. So if you look at, it's amazing those businesses, what they've done.
I mean, what other businesses from the 1990s internet that pivoted out of the newspaper world are still around low, low, still as big and prominent as they are. It's remarkable what they've done. But it also raises the question of, is that going to be their business model in five or 10 years? Like our search engine, people like, they like the fact that no one's paying us for it. They like the fact they can see everything, not just the people who are paying for it.
So, so I think there's an interesting innovators dilemma question here that you're right on the money on. And I think these guys will make it because they're going to invest in the kind of technology you're talking about. But they have to get that balance right because you've got to do it in a way that brings their customers along unless they fall into the trap that true car fell into where, you know, they, they leaned a little hard one way and the dealers, you know, reminded them who their customers were and paid the bill. Yeah, I just had Scott painter on the pod. So that's a, that's a, it's already life by the time this pod is live, but that's a, it speaks a lot about that.
One thing I want to, at one point that I want to, you, you mentioned, you said we're, we're not a generation of car people. And I think, you know, I just mentioned Scott painter and what he's working on in his company. It's very interesting because the thesis is all about that, the car for, you know, the next generation is more of a utility, much more than call it the prior generation, which, you know, to your point, it's like, Hey, I need something to get me from point A to point B has seven seats and is good on gas. Get me whatever you can. And I just think that unlocks an entire new set, you know, set of businesses, economics, because now I can, you know, operate a subscription, a subscription company with one or two models of vehicles.
And at the end of the day, as long as the economics makes sense, you know, I'm going to have plenty of demand because maybe someone doesn't care as much, or maybe just cars are a lot more commoditized. And if I have car plate, I could care less if it's a Chevy logo or a Tesla logo or Toyota logo. So I do think that's a very big monumental change in consumer behavior. And it's got to have a big impact on lots of businesses.
I want to go back for one second, though, on to co-pilot. And I want you to explain to me in the audience, like a third grader, who is the perfect consumer for co-pilot? And what is that experience really like? Or more importantly, how is that experience different from other listing sites?
Yeah, so we wouldn't call ourselves a listing site. We're really in that. Sorry. But I hear you. We probably super officially look like one, so I totally get it.
I think the first thing I'd say is the perfect person for us is someone who's smart. Most of our people are buying new or nearly new cars. They look a lot like our employees, frankly. But they're not car people. They don't know a lot about the car business. They don't know a lot about cars.
So they need help figuring it out. Often they're having families. They'll have a first child in a different car than when I was single. I've got two kids in our carpool. And oh, now I've got my 16-year-old running driver car. They go through these light transitions. They don't know enough about it to know what they need. But they're smart. And they're obviously smart if they're listening to this podcast, right? Exactly.
And they want to be empowered. I mean, that's why those people are the podcast, right? They want to be empowered. But they don't want to go have to go spend hours getting to be expert on something they don't know. And so for that person, it's the equivalent of the simplest way I would say it is imagine you have a brother or a cousin, a friend, a neighbor who knows the car business.
Imagine your car dealership guy's neighbor. And I come over to you and I'm like, listen, I got to get a new car. My daughter just turned 16. I want something to say. I want something that's not going to be too sporty. I don't want it to be show off or what's this reliable. How do you think about this?
It would be as if you sat down and said, Pat, I will do you the favor of let me give you five models to think about. And let me tell you why you might want to think about these. And then all right, when you search for cars, show me the cars you have. And I'll tell you which ones you should consider, which ones you should. It would be like having you, but as a buy, what's called 80% of you. Productizing me productizing.
Yes, we're pro it's the product ties an expert like you who wants to help people. And that's why we say you're still the pilot. Here's your co pilot. They're going to do the heavy lifting. They're going to do the analysis. They're going to bring the expertise, but you're still the decision maker. And that's what this is about.
I had a I have a patent in early generation, early generation expert system that we did it first, what years ago. And we've been following this whole AI, generative AI piece. And the whole idea of co pilot was exactly this. We picked that brand name because we want to do that with AI.
The data that we have is the key to doing that with AI. And it's how do you have a carbohydrate that in your pocket, helping you with every step of the process.
How is that how is that very tactical experience different for me? Right. If I go right now on any platform, listening site, anywhere, a search engine. And you know, I say what type of car one I see a list of cars. How is the co pilot experience specifically different?
So it's because of the copilot. So we go on board with us. You'll tell me, all right, what are you looking for? All right, tell me what you're looking for. I give a particular model in mind. A lot of people have a hypothesis for mind that I got a model I'm looking for.
I'm looking for a 2020 or 2021 GMC UConn. Okay, great. What equipment do you want on it? A lot of people don't even know what trim is. So we'll say, oh, you really need to be not. You're in really a case, healthy. Okay, we help them look at these things. And then what we do is we will take their area and say, how far do you want to look?
Most people know more than 100 miles unless it's something rare and then maybe they'll before me. Great. Every day we will search within 100 miles of your house. You will find every deal and we will search every dealership. We will find every matching car. We will then find everything from across the internet about every single car. We will analyze every single car. We will give it a buy grade. We will give you a sense of, you know, what makes it great and what makes it risky.
We'll give you a pros and cons kind of like reasons to buy reasons to pause. And every morning when you wake up, you will have a choice of how you want to do it. We call them hidden gems. What are the 10 best cars matching what you want in your area? And it's like tinder you swipe left swipe right. You're waiting for the train in the morning. Great. I'm going to look. Okay, I've now looked at the 10 best cars in my market because my competitor works for me.
Or if you're like, hey, maybe I just want something around me to get just a huge amount of car for my money. It will be exactly what I want. We call that the seal of the day. You can play with the seals today. Same thing, tinder your way through it.
Or if you're somebody who's like to power into it, great. We're going to take every car in your market and we're going to rank it. So unlike going to a listing site. So first of the curation I just described, you don't find on the listing sites because, you know, obviously there are winners and losers in that. And you can only do that if the dealers who are losing aren't your customers aren't the ones paying you.
The curation is a big difference. The other big difference that you have is when you do search yourself, every car is ranked. We rank them from first, best force. And then you can filter all that and use all the data that we bring. And so you're always getting a sense of that expertise weighing in on every decision, but you're the decision maker.
And so there's this sense of you do a lot less work, but you know a lot more and a lot less time than you could run any listing site. Yeah, you're making me want to find a car and co-pilot.
I want to add in typical provocative car dealership guy nature. I want to say this very bluntly, do car dealers hate you? Co-pilot or me personally? Maybe we can focus on co-pilot.
Yeah, my, no, our clients, our clients, obviously, when we were serving them, we're loved us because we made them very successful. I would say that anybody who encounters us, 99% of them love us, dealer wise.
Why? Because they want, right? They want, they had one of the 10 best cars and that consumer swiped right on them. And so when they say, how do you find me, I find you through co-pilot.
Now once in a while, if there's something, you know, something that's wrong or different, you know, then we got to work that out. That's what we need.
偶尔,如果出现了一些不对或不同的事情,我们需要解决它。这就是我们需要的。
So most dealers who experience us love us because they want, and you know what it's like as a dealer, a consumer comes in feeling confident that they know they want to buy that car. That's a better experience for you as a dealer because they, you start on third base because they trust that car.
They come in empowered with knowledge. They're not sitting there like afraid of, you know, engaging with you. You got to understand when our customers, before they find us, we did focus groups, couple, we are interviews, a couple weeks ago. I sat on three of them.
There were three women sales executives, DPs or directors run sales fees. And each of them had a story about the last time they bought a car. One of them said, I bought a car I didn't want. I regret it every day. But I just, you know, I didn't know what was going on. They were talking so fast.
And they, and they, and the second one said, I know I didn't get treated right. I didn't get treated right on the new one. And so there's this sense of lack of trust that the worst experiences of the car business create for people.
And I think good dealers pay the price for that. Dealers try to do the right thing, you know, get loyalty from their repeat customers, but new customers come in and assume that they must be like somebody who gave them a bad experience. So for those dealers, we're empowering them.
Now, if we were doing Super Bowl commercials, there'd be plenty of dealers who would say, well, I don't like that because I don't like the consumer knowing everything. But those dealers, we don't send somebody to them. So they're never, we never hurt them. There's no downside for them.
Yeah. So yeah, like you mentioned, you have this interesting selection process where, you know, it's the good the customers or the the well priced cars received those leads. So it's almost as if the only encounter, and I'm generalizing, but almost as if the only encounter dealers have with you is a positive encounter.
So I think that's a interesting dynamic given the fact that the dealer is not your customer, they're not paying you. And so it does set you up for an interesting dynamic there.
Zooming out a little bit, I think, you know, going back to the fact that you mentioned your 2 million visitors per month, which is, you know, an incredible number. I'm really curious to know being in your seat, are there any trends or any analytics, anything interesting that you're seeing you guys do put out a lot of data and you've shared some data with me in the past.
And so are there any notable trends that you're noticing right now from when it comes to either shop or behavior or buyer behavior or markets, anything on that side?
您是否注意到了任何显著的趋势,无论是店铺、行为、买家行为或市场方面的,还是其他方面的呢?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot and you've tweeted and talked a lot about this. I think it's really important.
嗯,我的意思是,你已经在推特和讲话中有很多感悟和想法了。我认为这非常重要。
I'd say the first one is, is in the continuing trend where the sedan is going away and the crossover is growing. And the problem with that is that, you know, this is what's happening before the pandemic but has accelerated.
It means on used cars, you've got more sedans than people who want to buy sedans and less crossovers than people who want to buy crossovers. So that's definitely a part of it.
I think the pricing trend, the thing that we put the alarm on and I knew it as well is the market was declining for most of the last year. It peaked for nearly new cars in August.
It peaked for early other cars kind of and the Q1 older cars and the Q1. And prices were going down month after month after month. And then in February hit and cars started this tread water, right?
Used car price started in tread water. And then we got into a situation where prices have been going up almost ever since. They've just been plaxed on treading water again these last few weeks.
But you know SUVs are $5,000 in 10, 12 weeks. I mean, that's jarring. And so I do think, you know, you've talked about, I don't think we're going to get back to new normal. I think we'll get to a new normal, not normal, the return to normal, that we thought may have happened.
Given this slight now and the fact that the, you know, less lease returns in the future in the next few years, there's going to be less cars, new cars available because we made less new cars and we, especially lease less new cars over the last couple years. I think cars are going to cost more.
And so I was looking at data last night, you know, prior to the pandemic, 38% of the cars, new cars on dealer lots were listed below $30,000. Today, that's 8% of cars. Before the pandemic, 52% of used cars. And I'm leaving off like the, you know, the consumer auction cars, but of the dealers consumers would typically look at, 52% of cars were under $20,000. Today it's 25%. So I think the other trend is, is that prices are going, have gone up on new cars, prices have gone up on used cars. And I think some of this inflation is going to get baked into a new normal, which means that buying cars is less accessible than it's been in a long time.
And I think this is a big problem. And then you add in interest rates, which make it effectively more expensive to own a car. Big time. I think that's a real negative for consumers. And I think it's bad for the economy. Yeah. And as you know, I tweet about this a lot, you know, clearly prices are being buoyed by just a lack of supply. The use side, while we have seen a little creep up just a tiny bit now in April, and likely in May, it's still, it's still where we store very far on where we should be from a supply perspective and all that is keeping prices inflated.
I think supply is going to be the fix here. Interest rates is not helping. Like you said, right? The average interest rate on a used car loan right now is close to 14%. On a new car loan, it's just about hit 9%. I just tweeted that out. So it's a crazy environment that's changed so rapidly. And it's putting a lot of pressure on consumers. I would add that I think the other problem we have is that the, you know, new car supply will put a little softening into the market. I think 31% versus, you know, 82% were paying over sticker.
But the cars are just more expensive. I mean, the average new cars are over $50,000. And so, you know, they're just more expensive and, you know, we're having challenges. I mean, you know, GM is another chip shortage going on right now. So, you know, you kinds of titles are down to like 20-day supply. And so, you know, you look at that and you say, we're not going to have enough used car supply to really get used cars to come back down. And the new cars they're making are just bigger and more expensive. And so, I think we've gone through kind of almost a structural upward shift in the cost of owning a car. And then you throw in interest rates. And, you know, I do think it's less successful than it's been. And I do think it's going to be a problem.
I mean, it's all but my belief is our data shows that, only reason this is happening is because the upper end of the market, the lower end of the market, is actually been treading water all year. But the upper end of the market, because there's the San Francisco Fed reported last month that there's 500 billion left and excess savings, savings on top of what people would normally have from the pandemic between lockdowns, not spending money and stimulus money. And that 500 billion is what's keeping the economy, the consumer so strong. But it's creating this paradoxical problem, which is, you know, yeah, consumers can afford to buy cars and we're still solid. There's a lot of cars, but we're baking in these high prices in a way that when supply goes down further, I don't think the prices are going to ever bounce back to normal. At least we go low.
Yeah, it's definitely feels like a structural upshift. And especially, I think the main point being that the average new car, the cost to produce a new car has just gone up. And that's just going to trickle down to use cars eventually. So I think on a more positive note, I do want to know, you know, what's the vision for Co-Pilot? How does the company and the brand and the product evolve over the next five years?
Well, I mean, we've been long playing in the AI space. We've used AI to power some of our data and models. We have a lot of time, it's because I will have a plug-in in the JetGPT plug-in store. I think Co-Pilot will be what you described on your show a couple weeks ago, which is with the AI, we will be able to 10x, I think, what our Co-Pilots can do in your pocket. And so ours isn't for everybody. I mean, I think the segmentation of the car market is an important thing to think about. If you always buy a BMW, we always buy a Mercedes and go to the same dealer for service. You always buy a Lex, go to that same dealer for service and you have good relationship with the salespeople. You don't need a Co-Pilot necessarily because, but if you're somebody who doesn't know a lot about cars, doesn't have a deep relationship with the dealership and often has to look your needs evolve as your life evolves, you need to need to want to go become a student of the car world or you need a partner, you need a Co-Pilot.
And so we want to be that in everybody's pocket. And our view is that an empowered consumer actually buys faster, buys with more confidence, and we think it creates a healthier car business.
And you know, we're not because we don't make money up the auto dealer ecosystem. We're happy to have lots of people succeed. We work with car facts. We work, we send people to dealer websites. We be happy to send people to listing sites. Like our view is we're just that partner to help them. And so we don't see this as a zero sum game with us. We see it as we're something that makes the ecosystem move more smoothly because an empowered enlightened consumer won't be reticent to go into that dealer.
We always say we would we would we monitor consumer consumer shopping. We'd say it's amazing how long they're circling the airport. And they basically a lot of them don't want to go in until they have to. They run out of fuel and they crack land because I just had to go in.
Where if they feel confident they go in sooner when they meet your people, they see your people and say, hey, you're I'm really excited about this car. Here's why. Like a motivated empowered consumer. Well, the well, there are some dealers who haven't come to accept that yet is better for their business. It is better. They will buy it with more confidence. They will be more loyal because they don't have to feel like when someone's doing the right thing that they have to be protecting against it.
They can know who's doing the right thing and trust and build relationships with people doing the right things. And so we feel like we can be that connected blue by the as a consumer advocate that helps the dealers and others and ecosystems doing the right thing. Actually build the relationships with consumers that they really want to have but have struggled to build over the last decade or two except for that core 30% of loyal customers will return all the time.
Well stated, my friend, very well stated. Pat, where can the audience learn more about CoPilot and yourself? So we're in the app store. CoPilot is our app name. Hopefully being in the plugin store by the time this drops. So chat to be T plug in store as well. Our website is co-pilotsearch.com. You can go there. Our Twitter handle is co-pilot for car account is co-pilot for car shopping with big followers of yours. And I'm at Pat Ryan Chicago on Twitter as well.
非常好阐述,我的朋友,非常好阐述。Pat,观众在哪里可以了解更多关于CoPilot和你自己的信息呢?我们在应用商店里。CoPilot是我们的应用程序名称。希望在这个发布前会在插件商店中。所以也请在插件商店中留言。我们的网站是co-pilotsearch.com。您可以去那里。我们的Twitter帐户是@co-pilot,车辆账户是@co-pilot for car shopping,我们非常追随您。我在Twitter上的用户名是@Pat Ryan Chicago。
I love it. Pat, this was awesome. Thanks for sharing all the gems. I loved hearing the stories from back in the day. And I'm excited to keep an eye on what you guys are doing. I think there's some really great things on the horizon here with all this new technology and pumped about what you're going to build. I think you're on a great track.
Thank you. Well, thank you. Listen, you've learned a lot from you and we appreciate all you do for the ecosystem and consumers. It's really fantastic. Thanks, Pat. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.