Getaround Owner Story: Neo in London
Last October we organized a webinar for future Getaround owners to show you how you can make your car profitable thanks to carsharing, or start as an entrepreneur on Getaround.
During this webinar, we invited a Getaround car owner to share with you his feedback and advice for your launch. Neo is one of our most engaged owners on the platform in the UK! He’s been located in London for almost four years.
You can watch the video of his testimony or read all of his answers below.
Could you, please, quickly introduce yourself?
I've been involved in the motor trade since I was 19. Started with body work into mechanical, developed a business and went into sales as well. So, I'm a business owner and have now introduced a car sitting operation as well.
How did you discover Getaround?
I was introduced to Getaround at the back end of 2018. Like I said, I know the industry inside out as well as the repair side, but the rental market I knew nothing about. What fascinated me about the carsharing market was similar to what we've seen in the repair market, which is people dropping off and not, you know, wanting to drive so much.
Carsharing for me is the way forward because of popular demand, but also because of the cost of running a vehicle, insuring it and everything else that is extremely high So the carsharing market is something I was fascinated by.
What got you running and expanding your business on the platform?
Well, I listed a car I had spare. It was sitting there most of the time doing nothing. So that was my trial. I listed that one and I found the app very, very easy to use. The Getaround support was really good and I found it easy to get going.
I spent just evenings really to start with, managing pricing, just updating things and just keeping an eye on things. And within 12 months I could add a second car by just reinvesting my income.
And today how do you manage all your cars on a daily basis?
Well now I’ve got a team. There's four of us in total. I've got two doing some admin work part-time, and I've got people that are inspecting the cars for me.
I'm up to eight cars currently. And then we'll be adding two more in the coming month or two. So I've had to obviously look at the help from others to scale the business. So yes, I started as a private, then used my repair company to scale.
Today you also said that you've launched a car sitting business. How did you end up, you know, exploring this?
Well, because I started communicating with other owners, some people haven't got the time available to look after the cars. Because we were dealing with a lot of the repairs already, it was an obvious escalation for me to help people manage their cars, whether it's 1, 2, 3, or more. You know, we've got the experience to know how to do that including the messaging and everything else that comes with it. Some people just haven't got the time to spare for that. So we started offering that and that's going really well.
If you had one more advice for a new owner now who wants to launch on Getaround? Anything in particular?
Good photographs, good description. Listen to the Getaround’s support and advice. Everything's done for you really. So it's so easy to start. And like I said at the beginning, the cars are not being used. So why not give it an opportunity to get that additional income?
What you do with that income after, whether you keep it as additional income or reinvest it and scale is entirely up to the individual. But for me as a business person, I was always looking to scale already.
Any questions? We can help! Reach out to us and we'll get back to you shortly.
Thinking of getting started with a fleet? Contact us at entrepreneurs@getaround.com