Car YouTuber Doug DeMuro’s Cars & Bids Auction Site Received $37 Million Investment
Image Above By Aaron Rome - https://www.flickr.com/photos/46456767@N06/29736432436/in/photolist-MiGZmY, CC BY 2.0, Source
This is new progress. Doug DeMuro or Douglas DeMuro (Source: Wikipedia) is a well-known car YouTuber since he started almost 10 years ago. His style of reviewing cars has contributed to 1.7 billion views and 4.5 million subscribers. Recently, his car auction site Cars & Bids received a $37 million investment from an investment firm, Chernin Group (TCG). TCG is a multi-level investment firm dedicated to building consumer businesses.
As a result, TCG will combine his YouTube career and Cars & Bids into one big company. TCG will take a majority stake in that new company. However, its CEO is not Doug, rather, it is a car lover, Ro Choy. Ro Choy has experience as CEO of the on-demand cannabis marketplace, Eaze. Eaze grew from $20 million to $200 million in sales under his expertise.
He is also the CEO of BitTorrent software developer and Chief Business Officer at Luxe. Luxe is Volvo's own valet-parking app. In an interview between Doug and Robb Report, Doug says it help brings Cars & Bids to another level. Plus, he can keep focusing on 'quirks and features' YouTube videos. TCG has the ability to handle what they need to do.
He adds that the expert touch from TCG who understood his business helped him manage the two jobs. Furthermore, a male born in Colorado, U.S. (Source: Wikipedia) has been doing this for the past three years. Regarding his auction site, he is confident about the format of his site since the users love it. But, to make it easier for bidders to negotiate, he and the team might plan to create a feature for it.
The investment made by TCG will add more employment opportunities in Cars & Bids with 18 employees currently, Doug says.
In terms of the Cars & Bids website development, Doug partnered with Blake Machado in 2019. He is a tech entrepreneur and car enthusiast. The website only focuses on selling cars that are loved by enthusiasts from the 1980s and above. Since Doug also loves weird cars, it can be considered too. Doug's 2012 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG Wagon was his first car to be auctioned after the site went live.
Doug is always in awe of the $230 million sale success of Cars & Bids. He initially assumes that Cars & Bids will fail since the site launched in May 2020. It was the time when Covid had hit. He doesn't expect that the site has now made over 10,000 auctions. He admits that the investment cash he received motivates him to shop for a Porsche Carrera GT. However, his parenting encourages him to buy a boring 2022 Mercedes-Benz E450 All Terrain.
