Selling your car? Coches.com

Last wednesday we had a talk with the man who created coches.com, Iñaki Arrola. This was an interesting and different case compared to the others we've seen so far since the idea came from a traditional business Iñaki was already working on: selling cars. He also said that he was not the first one to do this on the Internet and according to him the most important thing is not to have a new idea and that sometimes taking a bit from what others have done makes the difference. There's something like that in a Kotler's book saying that 90% of the ideas are not new at all.

Iñaki, like one of our previous guest speakers, Julio Alonso, is the kind of guy who also likes to start a business with his own funds. Anticipating cash flows and reinvesting is his main strategy. Well, in my financial management class that was indeed the idea but coming from the land of the interest rates, Brazil, I believe postponement with interest can make the difference sometimes.

Another thing he mentioned and that made me think about a business that I'm thinking with a friend is the lack of a tech guy in the team when you want to develop an online business. Indeed, while writing the business plan, I had no clue on how many servers to buy, the kind of software, costs involved, etc. Without the help of this friend it would take me twice the time and I would end up with an external person to lead the development team. He also talked about the importance to have balanced skills within the team, it really doesn't make any sense to have 5 marketing guys in a start up.

Last, we're discussing a little bit about the business model and since we're talking so much about the relationship with dealers I asked him: how about me? Can't a sell my car on coches.com? And he replied: yes, and it's for free. And I go: what? For free? What you mean? And Iñaki replies: I'm more interested in the traffic they can generate and charging the dealers which represent great part of the business and can pay for their ads. Well, I sort of agree with building traffic and maximizing your valuation as many businesses do (what are social networks in the end?) and I also agree that showing traffic to dealers makes the difference in pricing but I'll leave here a secret tip (don't tell anyone that I did it), of a website in Brazil that sells cars and charges everyone, doesn't matter if you're short or tall: www.webmotors.com.br. I know I shouldn't be giving gold mines away but since it was a nice chat and in business a good network is everything why not to help? ;)