Date nights. Weddings. Proms. An anniversary dinner.
Or “just because” you want to take a Rolls-Royce out for a spin.
If you’re looking to ride in style around Charlotte, founder Andre Powell Jr. is building something for you.
His startup, Goldsainte, is a luxury ride share company that allows users to rent or hail a Bently, Maybach, Rolls-Royce, or any number of high-end automotives.
The idea for Goldsainte was born out of Powell’s own “frustrating” and “inconsistent” experience of renting a car or using more standard ride hailing apps.
As a self-proclaimained “avid car guy” with a taste for luxury brands, Powell told Hypepotamus that he saw an opportunity to make high-end brands more accessible to drivers and passengers. Users can hail one of the vehicles within the company-owned fleet of luxury vehicles or join the carshare marketplace where members can list their vehicles for people to rent.
At first glance, a luxury car rental company might seem to have a relatively small addressable market. While Powell said the startup was initially targeting influencers, athletes, celebrities, artists, and bankers as key customers, he soon realized that the pool of potential users was much wider as people looked for ways to get behind the wheel of a nice car for a couple of hours.
People seemed ready for what Powell and the Goldsainte team built, as the app had 700 downloads even before they made any sort of public announcement that it was available in the Google Play and Apple App Store early in May.
Meet The Founder
Powell said launching in Charlotte, a banking and sports-heavy city, is strategic for the startup. And in its first few weeks since officially launching, the startup has gotten pretty creative with its marketing efforts, which included having a local artist custom paint a Bentley.
Goldsainte has its eye on the Dallas market next, and Powell said it will look to expand via a franchising model moving forward.
Powell, an Atlanta native who now lives in Charlotte, cut his teeth in the corporate world as a healthcare administrator before “taking a risk” to pivot into his first entrepreneurial endeavor as a restaurant franchise owner in Charlotte.
Now stepping into the tech world, Powell said he is in the middle of raising a $3 million seed round to help expand Goldsainte’s footprint across the US.
Want to follow along with Goldsainte’s growth? Here are some important links:
