VILLAGEx 2023 Founder Friday: Carmigo
Founder Fridays is a series that spotlights VILLAGEx founders and their startups
In January 2021, Carmigo, a breakthrough automobile tech startup, made a stunning entry into the South's startup scene, overcoming industry-wide market slowdown predictions. Against all odds, and after two years of hard work, the founders behind Carmigo - Andrew Warmath, Co-Founder & CEO; Daniel Kim, Co-Founder & COO; and Sean Peoples, Co-Founder & Head of Product - secured a whopping $7 million dollars in Series A funding in 2022. With a team of 25 professionals and a growing customer base, Carmigo has helped hundreds of people buy and sell cars with ease, saving them valuable time and making them money. Carmigo's revolutionary mission is to make buying and selling cars as easy as clicking a button.
What drove success during a market downturn? Passion, expertise, and experience. These were the driving forces behind Carmigo's founders, who have a deep understanding of the challenges faced by car buyers and sellers. They had a vision to revolutionize the car-buying process and make it a seamless experience.
"As the CFO of a car dealership group, keeping our inventory stocked with quality cars was hard before the pandemic, but in 2020, it felt impossible. As my co-founders and I sought a solution to that problem, we found that the folks trying to trade in their cars to us were also stressed out and feeling taken advantage of. So we quit our jobs and built an online marketplace, Carmigo, that makes it easier for dealerships to buy with confidence and easier for sellers to get competitive offers from dealerships inside and outside their local market," said Andrew.
Carmigo provides an intuitive platform for car owners looking to sell their vehicles. With just a few clicks, sellers can trade their cars for cash and receive real-time competitive offers from Carmigo's extensive network of buyers. The Carmigo team handles everything else, making it a hassle-free process for sellers.
Today, Carmigo is a VILLAGEx 2023 startup, poised to scale and help connect more sellers to buyers. With its innovative approach and exceptional team, Carmigo is well on its way to revolutionizing the car buying and selling process.
Q & A
(Responses have been edited for clarity)
What’s your best piece of startup advice for an entrepreneur in your industry?
Andrew: “Don’t be too precious with your original ideas because you’ll need to change and adapt to grow in a changing market. But pivots can also lead to mission creep, so you must balance change with a commitment to your company’s driving mission. We’ve added other services and revenue streams, but our mission is still to create an easier buyer experience for dealerships and an easier selling experience for sellers.”
In what ways will your venture help change your industry/culture/society?
Andrew: “It sounds overly simple, but we want to make selling a car easier for regular, stressed-out, busy folks. And we want to raise the bar for what used car buyers and sellers expect in the process. Carmigo isn’t a perfect fit for everyone, but by creating this easier third option for sellers and an auction alternative for buyers, we hope to make the overall market a better place for everyone to do business.”
What have been some of the most significant learning curves in running your own business? How did you overcome them?
Andrew: “The biggest learning curve was the used car market bubble and subsequent burst in 2022. We had to pivot from paying for growth to building it organically, which meant doing a 180 in our marketing department and working with our ops team to add new services and revenue streams. And we had to keep the current revenue stream strong by empowering our customer service team to keep providing that small-town, high-touch service as Carmigo scaled.”
