How You'll Buy Your Next Car
An Arlington startup may have found an end to the nightmare that is car buying.
The Carsquare team launched the lastest version of its platform last night. It lets shoppers search for over 3.5 million cars from several car buying sites, get instant CarFax reports, and share on Facebook what cars they’re interested in buying. Friends and family can weigh in. What's next? The two-year-old company is moving into a new HQ in Arlington and announcing a funding round. The big release debuted last night at Grafik's Alexandria HQ.
Founder/CEO Khurrum Shakir (second from left), flanked by EagleBank VP Charles Kapur, Carsquare board chair Robert Hisaoka, and Grafik president Lance Wain, says traffic to the site has jumped 300% in the last year to 2,500 daily users. The startup has been pouring money into its tech and marketing ever since winning Ballston BID’s inaugural LaunchPad Challenge last December. Carsquare, which changed its name from iGrabberAutos last year, is also creating virtual garages on the site where people can save dream cars. (This seems much easier than sitting outside the Ritz Carlton and gawking as cars pull in.)
The launch party brought out several techies, including 10Pearls chief revenue officer Glen Hellman and MAVA deputy executive director Kim Weir. Glen recently joined the Herndon-based mobile app, software, web, and gamefication developer, and says it has over 100 developers in Pakistan. Why there? They don’t get poached by competitors.
