AUTO1 GROUP

Hakan Koc and Christian Bertermann saw that Europe's used car market was fragmented, offline, and inefficient. Millions of car transactions happened through small dealerships with no price transparency.

In 2012, they founded Auto1 in Berlin to digitize the entire process. Their first product was wirkaufendeinauto.de — a website where consumers could get an instant offer for their car.

Auto1 inspected the car, bought it, and resold it to dealerships through AUTO1.com, a B2B marketplace.

Three business lines. 1) Merchant (wirkaufendeinauto.de) — buys cars from consumers.

2) AUTO1.com — B2B marketplace selling to 60,000+ dealer partners. 3) Autohero — consumer-facing online car retail (buy a car online, delivered to your door).

Revenue comes from the spread between purchase and sale price, plus marketplace fees. Processing 700,000+ cars per year.

wirkaufendeinauto.de — instant car buying from consumers (10,000+ cars purchased monthly). AUTO1.com — B2B marketplace connecting 60,000+ dealers to inventory.

Autohero — consumer-facing online car buying with home delivery.

Pan-European scale. While competitors focused on single countries, Auto1 expanded across 30 European countries simultaneously.

The B2B dealer marketplace (AUTO1.com) created a network effect — more inventory attracted more dealers, which attracted more sellers. The "we buy your car" marketing was simple and effective.

Razor-thin margins on used cars. Auto1 holds inventory risk — they buy cars and need to sell them before the value depreciates.

Logistics across 30 countries is complex. The stock dropped over 90% from its IPO peak because investors realized the path to profitability was much longer than expected.

Carvana's struggles in the US were a cautionary parallel.

SoftBank Vision Fund led the $460M Series E. Other investors include Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and various European VCs.

IPO'd on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in February 2021 at a €10 billion valuation.