The Untold Story How a $48M Startup Failure Created the Biggest Voice in Auto Retail & The Lessons That Mattered | Yossi Levi, Founder and CEO at Car Dealership Guy
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RSS Feed Yossi Levi raised $48 million to turn his family's Philadelphia used car lot into one of the early online dealerships, and when interest rates spiked in 2022 and Carvana fell 99%, his company fell 100%.
He walks through the $9 million term sheet that collapsed a week before closing when the investor suddenly asked for the family's real estate, the $5 million deal he closed over sushi 48 hours later, and the stretch where the stress got so bad he seriously considered quitting business to become a farmer.
Yossi Levi is the Founder and CEO of Car Dealership Guy, the media, events, and intelligence company with 750,000 followers and a subscriber list that includes the top 200 dealers in the country.
The son of an Israeli immigrant who learned business at a Hoboken car wash, he started out pulling weeds for $20 a day on his dad's lot, learned the industry at the auction, where they called him "the Sponge," and launched Car Dealership Guy on Twitter as a creative outlet while winding down his startup.
He speaks candidly about what growth-at-all-costs money really demands from a founder, how his wife's support gave him the confidence to go all in, and why he believes dealers have never been more under threat or had more tools at their fingertips.
Topics:
00:45 Learned Business From His Father In Hoboken.
12:30 Auctions Were His Only Networking Tool.
24:30 A $9 Million Term Sheet Vanished.
33:50 Realized He Never Controlled The Business.
50:30 Building CDG To Be As Core As CRM And DMS.
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