For consumers, spontaneous is not typically a word associated with the car buying process. It takes weeks, if not months, of research that requires the buyer to sift through heaps of bad information online. For dealers, a dealership’s website is the gatekeeper for interested buyers; yet, it often doesn’t convert at optimal levels. Charleston-based PureCars offers a full suite of auto-specific digital advertising solutions that move a dealer’s customers from their computer seat to the driver’s seat. Following a series A fundraising round of $10MM, PureCars has grown from 2 people in Atlanta to a whopping 50 and recently expanded their Midtown Atlanta office to accommodate the larger team. We were in the house at the new office opening party and chatted with CEO and Co-Founder, Jeremy Anspach, to get the scoop.
“Being Charleston-based has been phenomenal. That’s where I reside, so, naturally that’s where we started. However, through the acquisition of Tentail just over 2 years ago, it was really quick for us to see that Atlanta has a lot of tech,” says Anspach. “It’s probably the closest city to Charleston that allows us to hire at scale. You can see the growth. We filled the whole floor and we’ll be filling another floor shortly.”
“We have an evergreen model. Our growth is limited to the talent pool that’s available,” he continues. “Last quarter we had over 800 applicants. We hired 24. In dev, we do very extensive testing and most don’t pass. I can look anyone in the eye in any division at PureCars and know that we have the best of the best. There’s still a lot more seats to fill and I haven’t had a recruiter say that they can’t fill it.”
A Detroit native, the auto industry has been in Anspach’s DNA as long as he can recall. His passion for cars coupled with his entrepreneurial knack motivated him to help an industry painpoint. “I’m big into solving needs. When you think about a car purchase, it’s the second largest purchase someone makes besides a home,” he explains. “When you visit a dealer’s’ website, which is far more valuable for inbound traffic than any human in the dealership, the content is irrational. It’s an alphabetical list saying AM/FM Radio, ABS Brakes, etc. For us, that was the first need we knew we needed to solve. We took billions of rows of dirty data and figured out how to make it highly relevant. From there, we built products in the marketing automation world to drive more quality traffic to dealers’ websites, optimize that experience, and give them the tools to convert. The market is many billions of dollars in digital advertising, besides retail it’s the second largest, and it’s the dirtiest. We knew that if we could solve for it in auto, if the board ever made the decision to go horizontal, it’d be a cakewalk.”
The future is bright for PureCars. Not only is the team growing, but at the end of last year, they were named a Google Premier SMB Partner (they are the fastest SMB Partner ever approved). With the move into this new space, they’re gearing up for even more hiring with 20+ positions open. Visit their Careers Section for more information.
Follow PureCars on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PureCars
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PureCars
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Purecars/posts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purecars
Here’s some fun from the opening of their new space.
