Aidan Rushby is an archetypal entrepreneur. “My mind is restless, I scribble down 20 or more business ideas spontaneously each week,” he says. “When there’s an idea that I keep coming back to, or start exploring in more detail, I know that there’s some potential.” Oh, and he spends any spare time reading IPO prospectuses and annual reports: “I enjoy it,” he laughs. “You can get so many nuggets of knowledge from them.”
A few years ago, Rushby, 38, pored over the business models of Cazoo, Alex Chesterman’s beleaguered online car retailer, and Carvana, the US version that inspired Cazoo. “They addressed a significant market, used cars, but I wasn’t convinced of their profit potential. However, I’d also been interested in the buy-now-pay-later concept popularised by Klarna, and thought there was an opportunity to combine the two.”
That’s what he has done with Carmoola, an online car finance service where users can set a budget, arrange a loan and access immediate funds via its app. After a dozen or so questions, the site shows how much can be borrowed. It claims to cut out the commission and broker fees charged by most finance providers at used car dealerships. “Car dealerships usually take 10 to 15% commission on the loans, and have 1000-plus people working on their teams [adding to costs].” Carmoola’s average APR is about 15%; since it went live in 2022, it’s processed two million loan applications, funding the purchase of £50 million of cars.
But Carmoola wasn’t the first roll of the start-up dice for Rushby; that was Movebubble, a proptech business aimed at helping renters find a home, which closed down. “It struggled to generate meaningful revenue despite several years of almost unbearably unrelenting effort,” he says. Axing the business was “the hardest moment of my professional life, but I learned valuable lessons and felt ready to tackle a new challenge with a fresh perspective.”
It was also where Rushby met his co-founders on Carmoola, Ukrainians Roman Sumnikov and Igor Gordiichuk who brought in engineers from their home country. “There’s a great talent haul in Ukraine, and our chief technology officer and engineers performed near-miracles to build the tech against a truly dire backdrop.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as the site was preparing to launch. “From the UK we could see how bad it was getting, and we told them to leave; they closed the borders just hours after they crossed,” Rushby recalls. “I flew out to Warsaw and we sorted out their apartments and an office there. Everyone kept working throughout — now six are in Warsaw, six back in Ukraine. In the early days there were sirens going off all the time, but no one ever complained, they’re just incredible individuals.
“It’s super difficult for us to understand living here, but I’ve flown out four times since the war broke out. It’s a challenge to get there, but worth it.”
At the time, Rushby was also trying to raise finance, pursuing lenders “that I knew could provide more than ‘just’ capital. Our investors all have relevant geographic, sectoral or technical experience, which makes them hugely valuable as partners and board members, helping to steer the business and interrogate our plans.”
Backers include QED, the investment arm of Jaguar Land Rover, AlleyCorp, and Kyiv-based u.ventures, who with others have put in over £140 million.
Business has ticked up: revenues are up from £411,000 in 2021 to £3.1 million last year, and forecast to hit £8 million this year. Driving Carmoola towards profitability means Rushby has big ideas. “I believe there’s scope to become the ‘everything app’ for motorists, with insurance, warranties, maintenance and so on.”
Expansion into Europe and the US is “also attractive,” he adds. But not every deal goes to plan. “We have an enviably low default rate, but occasionally we have to recall someone’s car if they fail to make their payments,” Rushby says.
“Most of the time, this goes smoothly as the borrower is keen to cooperate, but in the early days we did end up in an international game of cat and mouse to find and reclaim a £20,000 white BMW 3 series.”
The customer had moved the car into someone else’s name, and driven it from Manchester to Bulgaria. Carmoola reported the BMW stolen, “then it was impounded in Bulgaria five months after we’d reported it. We had to work with Interpol — it felt a bit like we were in an episode of Line of Duty!”
One of Rushby’s team flew out to drive the car back, “it took ages, they had to stop at a dealership to get it fixed, but eventually the car was repatriated to the UK and sold at auction. We made a loss on that one.”
