🚪 How Kenan sold his ride-share advertising startup to Lyft
The No-Code Exit Story of Kenan Saleh and Halo Cars
Hello, Katt here.
Welcome 273 new subscribers to No-Code Exits.
The story this week is about Kenan Saleh and his inspiring startup and acquisition story. Although part of their product was built with code, without No-Code tools their journey would have been very different.
Learn how:
🌝 Kenan and his cofounder spotted an opportunity while still in college
🚀 They ran a first pilot and could track that their idea worked
🤘 They used No-Code to grow and scale very fast
🪄 They could do the work of 20 people with 6 people
🚪 They got acquired by Lyft after 10 months
Enjoy it and happy building!
🎈 7 Cool Finds
Gummy Search helps you with finding real problems to solve (or complaints about competitors) for that perfect business idea.
Zapbots is an early release from Zapier to build an AI app, without code in a few easy steps.
Feather automatically publishes content written on Notion to a SEO-friendly and sleek blog.
Pika helps you to create beautiful website and device mockups from screenshots.
No-Code mobile made easy with advanced features like Bluetooth, open APIs and complete customization. If you think it, you can Thunk it with Thunkable.
Rows is the easiest way to use data in a spreadsheet.
If famous Subreddit r/InternetIsBeautiful was a newsletter it would look like this. Discover awesome websites from the depths of the internet.
*This section is a mix of paid sponsorships (in bold) and cool things I use, discovered or made.
💡 Acquisition Inspiration
Get inspired by No-Code projects for sale on Microns 🚀.
What Funding Resource Database
No-Code Tools Paytable and Airtable
Revenue $5,376
Price $20,000
🔥 Maker Interview
Hello Kenan, tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Kenan. In 2018 while I was in my senior year at the University of Pennsylvania I cofounded a startup named Halo Cars.
The summer before, I interned at a VC firm in Indonesia. They wanted to build out their CRM and that was my assignment as the intern. So I was searching for things to build that and that's where I discovered No-Code tools. I loved it and I started using them in every other job or company that I've worked at since.
Tell us about your product that you made?
Halo Cars was a way to create new ad space for ride-share vehicles. Smart digital screens sit on the roof of cars enabling the display of hyper-targeted ads. It was a way for Uber and Lyft drivers to earn more money.
We got the idea when we started noticing how good digital ads (like on Facebook) are because they are hyper-targeted. On the other hand, you still have those classic outdoor ads that are very generic and ineffective. We thought they could become more sophisticated, just like digital ads.
So we made advertising platform software which helped you to target the ads to show at certain times, weather, locations, geo-fence them, etc.
Which No-Code tools did you use?
Our advertising platform software was custom coded from scratch. But it’s the No-Code tools that helps us significantly scale. Without it, it would have been a completely different journey.
Our No-Code core stack was:
The Airtable and Zapier combo was very important. The team uses Zapier to send things into Airtable, but also has Zaps that watch for changes in Airtable that then kick off workflows in other apps.
An example:
Drivers would fill out a Typeform to apply,
Zapier would pull that data into our Airtable base.
Then Zapier would send the driver a ‘thank you for applying’ text message using Twilio
Then Zapier would send an internal notification to us using Gmail.
Zapier would send a contract to the driver.
It enabled our small, 6-person team to do the work of a 20-person team. While, our engineer could focus on the core of our product and didn’t need to waste time on operational stuff.
What went into building the initial version?
We made a small initial pilot with 5 drivers and advertisements to our own website. Our website at that time didn’t have any traffic because no one knew about us. We tracked where the Google searches were coming from with where these cars went, and they mapped together basically one-to-one.
So that was one of the strongest proof points initially, is that we showed “Hey, we work, we tried it on ourselves. And here is the data proving.” We used that to get some of our early customers and small local SMBs as our first advertisers.
We all tested this while we were still in school. The prototypes and pilot were funded by some start-up competitions we won. It all went well, we raised $500,000 from angel investors, and we went for it full-time.
Why did you choose to build with No-Code?
For multiple reasons:
Cheap: We were paying about $100 a month for Zapier. If we had decided to code things instead, it would have cost us thousands to hire or contract with someone to write the code.
Fast
No need to maintain custom architecture
No need for devs
Devs can focus on the core product
Easy to onboard people
What's your business model?
We would install these digital screens on the roof of these ride-sharing cars. We would sell the ad space to advertisers. A part of the ad revenue was for the drivers and a part was for us. Drivers could make around $400 extra per month.
How have you attracted users and grown your product?
First, we proved with a pilot that it works. From there, we created a case study to convince the first advertisers. And every time, we build a new case study to get a slightly larger customer.
And then we just kept doing that. Eventually we got to ad agencies. They introduce you to all of their clients, so that is how we kept growing through sales.
Can you tell us more about the acquisition?
We had no intentions to sell. We had been working on it for 10 months, were growing very quickly, had just gotten our first big customers and we had raised some money.
Lyft approached with an offer because they were interested in entering this business. It was a good offer. We were very excited about the synergy (to use Lyft’s distribution to find drivers).
Why did the buyer decide to buy it?
Lyft wanted to create their own advertising and media division. They didn't have one and they were interested in entering that space.
So they bought us and we became a new line of business for them. So the Halo team and product came over. It became what's called now Lyft Media. I’m now running that division at Lyft as general manager.
Can you share some numbers/stats?
I can't share a ton, but some interesting numbers:
We had just sold our first large advertising customers in the tens of thousands of dollars, which was large for us at the time. Although now, we have like multimillion dollar deals.
We had launched our product in New York with 100 drivers.
We had some drivers in Chicago and Philadelphia.
We were 11 months in.
We were 10 full-time employees. Lyft was surprised with how small we were and what we were doing. They were shocked that we didn't have a big engineering team.
What's your advice for No-Code Makers who are just starting out?
The first thing I would say is start with a problem that you have. I think that's one of the best motivators for a product or an idea. If you have that need and some friends too, and you would pay for it, then that's usually like a good base to start off.
Where can we go to learn more about you and your project?
Check out what we are doing now at media.lyft.com
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn
Any questions for Kenan? Reply to the email or post a comment.
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