William Leonard
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Atlanta StartUp Podcast. My name is William Leonard, your host for today. I’m excited to be sitting down with Kai Tan, who is the founder and CEO of RevMatch. Kai, welcome to the podcast.
Kai Tan
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
William Leonard
Yeah, Kai. It was just a few weeks ago when we saw each other at Startup Runway where you and the RevMatch team took home, the Judges Choice Award, and congrats on that. And for those who aren’t aware or weren’t there at the Startup Runway showcase to learn more about RevMatch, I would love to start there and give us a brief rundown of the company and what you’re building.
Kai Tan
Yeah. My name is Kai. I’m the Co-Founder of RevMatch, an AI recommendation engine designed for auto enthusiasts. We essentially help people who have a passion and lifestyle for project cars, market buying vehicles, source aftermarket parts, and a very disparate augmented ecosystem, leveraging powerful data and several different tools out there, we create a centralized experience that can connect users throughout the whole ecosystem and experience.
William Leonard
Nice! Before we dive more into the business side of things, I think it’s always fascinating to understand how a founder discovers a problem that they’re now solving and where their passions may lie. And I think this one’s a bit obvious in that maybe you’re a car enthusiast and have had trouble sourcing parts, historically. But tell us more about that and your journey and foray into being a founder.
Kai Tan
Yeah, definitely. All my life, I’ve kind of grown up around cars, as you can tell, started out, when I was a kid, just working on cars with my dad, my very first car was a 95, Acura Integra. And it was like a very small, fun little car, but I love just tinkering around with that, and just understanding how the inner workings kind of went about. And it just motivated me to really kind of build this to some sort of aspiration of what I wanted it to be, which was like a very fun fast car. And then that connected me with more and more other people. And then as the years went by several other different cars went from like Toyota Supra to Honda Preludes, all these kinds of different vehicles. And I kept seeing the same problems arise, which is that it’s really hard to source parts. And it’s really hard to tell if a part is the right fitment, the right thing you’re looking for that can essentially achieve those goals. What are those goals like, “Hey, I want to make a certain number of horsepower, or, Hey, I want this vehicle to be able to shave off 10 seconds off my lap time, right”. And being part of this community that is very passionate about it. I talked to other people, and individuals, and just understood that other people feel the same way, right? They’re using a lot of outdated tools, like forums, and they’re looking at different Facebook groups trying to find information that’s sometimes very outdated. Or, like, let’s say there’s an image that’s supposedly supposed to be there, but then it’s just like gone already. So it was really hard for people to kind of fact-check information and verify that stuff. And so talking with a few of my friends who we went to Georgia Tech together, like a decade ago, we’ve always been entrepreneurs. And since we saw this opportunity, take something that we were passionate about, and also build a business around it. And so that’s how it RevMatch evolved. I would say that at the very beginning of RevMatch what we what we wanted to do was help people do group buys for aftermarket parts. So like, if you have like 10 people who want to buy the same part, you could get a discount for it. But what when we did more of the research around that, we noticed that that was a very difficult process, and not many people were doing that. And so we made that pivot into okay, like, how do we help people find information more easily? And that’s how RevMatch evolved into what it is today. Since then, we’ve been moving very moving along to build a platform that provides that sense of community, inspiration, and collaboration with our users.
William Leonard
Yeah, I’m sure you have an interesting group and diverse group of users as well as I think about this market. You think about the traditional websites like a car ID or a rock auto that are just sort of your general base marketplace to find used parts and things like that. How would you say that RevMatch is taking a sort of differentiated approach I know that you’re using data, and even probably some machine learning algorithm to inform and create a recommendation. So tell us a little bit more about that and how it works from a real consumer perspective.
Kai Tan
Yeah, in traditional kinds of markets, people have to have an intention of what they’re looking for. And that could be based upon like word of mouth, or it could be just like, Hey, I saw something cool out there. And so when people go into like these, Amazon’s or eBays, they’re trying to find information with something that they already have in mind. What we noticed when we did a lot of our user research is that people spend a good amount of time researching, they spend about eight to 10 hours a week visiting server forums, having 20 tabs open up different like aftermarket websites. And what we wanted to do was simplify that process. And so using a combination of APIs out there, big data, and then also social dynamics, we were able to build a recommendation engine where people can say, like, Hey, I have this year make model vehicle. And this is the project type I want to build. So like, “I want to build an overland vehicle for my 2021 Tacoma”. Using those kinds of key pieces of information, we can then source different resources that can aggregate all that information to create a curated list for users that can then be vetted by the community. So then, when you do see like, “Oh, hey, I have an overland vehicle, what parts do you recommend for me”, not only do we show you the things that make the most sense for an overland vehicle, which is like aesthetics, rooftop tents, we’re also taking in information from our community. So hey, these other 10 people who have the same vehicle as you have this rooftop tent, and so therefore, it’s as more validated that this is a trusted part, this is a trusted manufacturer. And so because people can see that firsthand, and they able to see as other people install it, they were asked those questions, it creates a sense of community that people didn’t begin to trust, and then cuts that research time in half. And so that’s what’s kind of makes us very unique, because of all that information, no one’s aggregating together or kind of centralizing. We have a competitive edge with our proprietary AI because we’re able to essentially help people build faster and focus on building their vehicles.
William Leonard
And when you say building vehicles, are you more focused on the cosmetic additives? Or is this more so also including central parts, like a timing belt, or a gasket, or something like that as well?
Kai Tan
No, it’s all of us. It’s for anyone who just has a passion for doing auto mechanic stuff yourself, or with a group of people. So it can range from anything from modifications to appearances, all the way to performance mods. We do have a wide number of users on our platform, we’re just again, very focused on different things. And because of that, can aggregate that information to help people kind of essentially collaborate and work towards building the same vision or similar visions of their bills.
William Leonard
Right. And, as an investor, I can’t help but think about this being a B2C app. And across many successful B2C apps, you see, user experience, and core product design, at the root of the company’s success. And Kai, you have an interesting background of working on product design and experience at companies like IBM, Meta, and other companies as well. So how do you leverage your design background and influence? How are you building the product today to encompass a thoughtful and strategic user experience?
Kai Tan
Yeah, definitely. I think with my background, I went to Georgia Tech, and have a background in human-computer interaction. And so the first and foremost thing, which I think is like, for any startup, or just like being an entrepreneur is the research itself. So, before we even jumped into, features and ideas, we made sure we talked to our users talk to auto-enthusiast. So the very beginning of our journey, we talked to several friends or family who had a passion for this. And we just asked them, there’s some question, what are some of your frustrations? How do you find parts today? What are the things that you care about most when it comes to purchasing parts? And things like are some very obvious ones like, pricing is a very important piece. But then it’s also like quality and stuff like that. So, because research is so important, that helped us kind of lay down the foundation of how we want to approach our roadmap of what features we wanted to build for our users. And then with design, we wanted to make sure that users have a really pleasant seamless experience, there were no friction points and a sense that when you’re going in here, you’re able to do the things that you need to do, and then get back to driving your car. A good example is that we wanted to make sure that when people were adding parts to their, platform, it wasn’t just like a manual tedious process. Because they could just do that to date, right, they could just go into an Excel sheet and do that today. Instead, we made it seamless to where you just enter a few key pieces of information. And then we would handle all the rest of that, because of just the way we’re pulling in data. The other pieces that are like a lot of our users are very visual people, they like seeing other people’s modifications, and they like showing their modifications in a more celebratory manner. We made sure that the design helped emphasize those things so that it was clear to other users, here’s a part that was posted. Here’s something that was done recently, how do you kind of comment on that, so that was important? And I would say like, the other piece of design also is just like iterating and taking in that feedback. So as we continue to make progress on our platform, we talked to users and said, “Hey, what are things that you wish for more proof”. That led to us building out essentially a specific user flow, where we improve the search for people to discover other people’s vehicles. And that increased our user retention by a big percentage because now people were able to find other users more quickly.
William Leonard
Right. And that’s so fussing you talk about little product tweaks here and there that increase retention increase, maybe daily active monthly active users, things like that. What are some do’s and don’ts from a B2C design product experience perspective, that you’ve seen across your experiences? Maybe at Facebook, or IBM, that works in terms of boosting engagement or deflating engagement as well?
Kai Tan
Yeah, the one thing to think about is just not every piece of feedback isn’t the right kind of feedback. There are going to be certain biases that people will have. So, when you’re thinking about, “Oh, should I make this change?” You should also look at the opportunity sizing. So, is this change going to have a huge impact, or will have a very minimal impact? If it has a minimal impact, then it’s probably not worth investing in, because that just means more engineering time, which means more design time. So that’s something to kind of think about. The other thing is just understanding where the direction of the product is going. So like for us, we know, there are certain metrics that we want to hit from an investor’s perspective, but also just how we’re increasing that user retention. And so that’s, I think the key to like a lot of our decision making was just how is this going to influence our roadmap later on, where we can then make huge ways when it comes to like looking at like some of the certain metrics that we need to achieve.
William Leonard
That’s great insight, Kai. And let’s, let’s shift gears here a little bit to talk more about Startup Runway, in your experience you were one of the three winners, and you took home the Judges Choice Award. Tell us more about your experience in Startup Runway as a participant and some of the great things that you and the company were able to experience.
Kai Tan
We applied to Startup Runway and we were invited to pitch ourselves. And it was a great experience, one, to be in front of other investors such as yourselves and some of the other judges. Who have real-world experiences helped us kind of understand, how to pitch ourselves, but also how to take in that feedback and go in what direction we need to go and write. I enjoyed just meeting all the judges and being able to have more real conversations with them afterward. And some of those conversations evolved into meeting other people in the VC community and the Startup community. So, I think that was powerful to be able to do that. I would also say pitching his hard. And even though I did win, it took a lot of practice, and that’s what these things are about, right? It’s just like getting yourself in front of other judges, and other audience members, and being able to be comfortable. So that you can when you do have to like pitch in front of a real VC, you are prepared to answer a lot of the questions that I got asked the other day. Because those are things that surprisingly come up more often than not. I remember very distinctly one of the judges asked, “How will EVs and the future of EVs impact our market?” And that question has come up probably three or four times in investor calls that I’ve been part of. And so being able to have that in the back of my head, and being able to answer that has been helpful.
William Leonard
Yeah, I think, one investor is asking a lot of questions, you’ll probably get similar questions from other investors. So, it just helps mold your mind around, maybe this is a pressing need that I need to address in my deck, in my roadmap, and in my pitch even. So I’m glad you had a good experience there. And you were able to take home some non-dilutive funding for your business, how do you see that impacting RevMatch over the next couple of months and into 2024? What’s exciting and top of mind for you, as you think about new product updates, new business model updates, new features, and functionalities?
Kai Tan
Yeah, the grant is helping us a lot. We are bootstrapped today, so we do a lot of things out of pocket just to make sure we’re building users and growing our users. So a good portion of that will help with like our marketing, it will also help with a lot of our operational costs. So like, there are things that we have to make sure we’re staying ahead of whether it’s things like our server costs, there’s certain like membership fees that we have access to that we need to make sure we’re staying on top of that. So that’s going to help with that. But I think the biggest thing for us is not the grant itself, but it motivates us even more. Some people believe in us, or else they wouldn’t have voted for us. And so that’s going to keep us driving RevMatch to make sure that we’re the best auto enthusiast product out there for our users that helps them save time, but also connecting them with a big niche community that we can then build together with.
William Leonard
Kai you touched on the business today and how you all are bootstrapping. And for some founders, that’s a choice. And for some other founders, maybe it’s a forced choice of having to bootstrap the company. What are your thoughts on that? And why are you opting to go that route? Or have opted to go that route early on? And what are some of the benefits that you’re seeing of having bootstrapped the company thus far for the early iterations of the product?
Kai Tan
The reason we’re bootstrapping is because we want to make sure that we have good product fit. We don’t want to bring in early investors too early to the point where we lose a little bit of our vision, I would say. And so being able to try to get us as far as we can to the goal line is going to be helpful so that when we do have these conversations with investors, we have the right metrics, the right numbers to say like, “Yes, this is worth investing in RevMatch this is where you are joining our vision. The other piece of that is just that I would say the majority of all our founders like we have families today. We’re bootstrapping it to decide because we want to make sure that before we dive too heavily into this, we can keep our family secure and stuff like that. And I think that’s going to be kind of like the pros and cons you’ll see with like, older entrepreneurs, such as myself, who’s like, in my mid-30s, like I have a family to think about, or else I was in my 20s, I was just go all in and just like quit my job and do everything with this, right. But now, because I have those responsibilities. I’m more careful and tactical about how we’re running our business and how we’re growing that business. For us, this is like a big risk and we want to make sure that we’re putting all our faith into it before we jump in with the right investors.
William Leonard
That makes sense, Kai, I think that’s a great place to wrap there. Appreciate your perspective on RevMatch and your Startup Runway experience and looking forward to seeing you and the team grow and scale here.
Kai Tan
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
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