E. Steinert on business strategy
From Founder Dialogues with CarGurus Founder Langley Steinert · · Founder Collective
“I think the only true form of conviction for me was when we turned profitable, which I think was like in it's a bit of a high standard for conviction. You know that is the goal to be clear. You know, if venture capitalists use that conviction standard, we'd never invest in anything, right? Well, maybe it's old-fashioned, but that is the goal.”
On , E. Steinert, Founder & Executive Chairman at CARGURUS INC, spoke about business strategy during Founder Dialogues with CarGurus Founder Langley Steinert on Founder Collective.
About E. Steinert
Langley Steinert, founder and executive chairman of CarGurus, has described the company as a shopping platform that uses data to rank car listings by price relative to market value, labeling them as "great deal," "good deal," "fair deal," "poor deal," or "overpriced." He has stated that the company had about 20 million unique visitors a month in the United States and more average daily traffic than competitors such as Autotrader, Kelly Blue Book, Edmunds, and Cars.com. Steinert has said that CarGurus had been profitable for eight consecutive years as of 2016 and 2017, and that this profitability allowed the company to control its own destiny without raising large venture capital rounds. He has noted that the company's board consisted of longtime associates rather than investors demanding short-term returns. Steinert has discussed his background as a co-founder of TripAdvisor, which he said raised only $4.5 million in capital before reaching a $9 billion market cap. He has expressed a preference for being in control when starting companies and has described himself as a leader rather than a manager. On the automotive industry, Steinert has stated that mobile traffic had grown from about 40% to 65% of CarGurus' traffic over two years, and he has argued that eliminating dealers entirely would be a mistake because they provide service and a tactile buying experience. He has said CarGurus had no plans to sell and expected to become a public company.