TrueCar.com
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|
| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: TRUE |
| Industry | Technology |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California |
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Key people
|
Chip Perry (CEO) Scott Painter (founder) |
| Products | Pricing and information for new and used cars |
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Number of employees
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500 |
| Website | www |
TrueCar, Inc. is an automotive pricing and information website for new and used car buyers and dealers. TrueCar is paid by dealerships so they can obtain potential buyers' contact information. Potential car buyers receive an online report illustrating what others have paid for cars, illustrative pricing from a network of TrueCar Certified Dealers. TrueCar reports its users have purchased more than 2 million cars from dealers in its network. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and its network includes around 10,000 automobile dealers in the United States.
TrueCar's "massive up-to-the-minute database of selling prices" is an example of big data at the petabyte level and is run on Apache Hadoop.
TrueCar was originally incorporated under the name "Zag.com Inc." in Delaware in February 2005. Scott Painter, along with several co-founders, including Tom Taira and Jim Nguyen operated the business primarily as a provider of “white-labeled” auto-buying programs for affinity groups. Within the Zag.com environment, the concepts of price confidence using data and analytics presented in an easy-to-digest form was incubated and launched in a separate company, TrueCar.com. The TrueCar concept involved gathering data from a number of different sources in order to compile updated vehicle prices for consumers in an attempt to enhance Zag.com's services. Ultimately, the two entities were combined to form TrueCar, Inc.
TrueCar ranked 11th on the L.A. Business (LAB) annual list of the 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies in Los Angeles, and Inc. Magazine ranked TrueCar on its 2010 list of Fastest Growing Companies in America.
In January 2011, TrueCar released ClearBook.com, a used vehicle index that analyzes the used car market. The website provides users with prices based on market data.
In August 2011, TrueCar raised $200 million in debt and equity financing, and purchased ALG, a company that provides information on future residual values of vehicles, for an estimated $83 million. TrueCar later hired Larry Dominique, former vice president of product planning at Nissan, to run its ALG business and work with auto manufacturers. Additional 2011 deals included the acquisition of News Corp-backed Honk.com in May.
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