“Keep the Take Rate Low” - Turo’s Chuck Fisher on Scaling a Successful Peer-to-peer Marketplace

Run the Numbers

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“Keep the Take Rate Low” - Turo’s Chuck Fisher on Scaling a Successful Peer-to-peer Marketplace

CJ Gustafson

Jun 13, 2024

Transcript

In this episode, CJ interviews Chuck Fisher, CFO of Turo, the world’s largest peer-to-peer car rental marketplace, doing more than $800 million in revenue per year. Chuck breaks down the company’s business model, what separates it from traditional car rental companies, and how it differs from marketplaces like Airbnb and Uber. He explains how Turo helps people build micro businesses and sheds light on the company’s total addressable market and why it shouldn’t be compared to its offline analog. He also talks about the company’s take rate, what substantiates it, and the benefits you may reap from keeping the take rate as low as possible, including the story about Turo’s own success in 2021. Chuck describes Turo’s Risk Score system, the data used in this, and how they use this information to market back to the best prospective customer. He also shares his firsthand account of the fall of Lehman Brothers and what he took away from it.

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@cjgustafson222 (CJ)

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(03:14) Sponsor - Maxio | NetSuite

(05:59) The Business Model of Turo

(10:59) The Sign of a Healthy Marketplace

(13:31) Turo Vs Airbnb Vs Uber

(16:58) Sponsor - Mercury | Leapfin

(18:54) Turo’s Total Addressable Market

(25:16) Why Marketplaces Shouldn’t Be Compared to Offline Analogs

(26:25) Customers Turned Hosts and What This Means for the Business

(28:50) The Take Rate and What Substantiates It

(32:53) Turo’s Risk Score System

(38:27) Whether or Not Marketplaces Can Survive at Scale Without Cheap Money

(41:22) The Benefits of Keeping the Take Rate Low

(45:58) Marketplaces and M&A

(49:10) Chuck’s First-hand Account of What Happened at Lehman Brothers

(55:52) Long-ass Lightning Round: Advice on Prioritization

(58:29) Chuck’s Finance Software Stack

(01:01:20) Craziest Expense Story

Discussion about this podcast

Run the Numbers

Run the Numbers is a twice-weekly podcast about financial metrics and business models, designed for ambitious people operating tech startups. It's a collection of things host CJ Gustafson (CFO at Partstech and writer of Mostly Metrics) has learned and thought about in the trenches as a tech CFO.

This show is meant to serve as a playbook of sorts for the stuff CJ wishes he knew earlier in his career, both from experience and from copying people smarter than himself.

Topics frequently touch upon Startup SaaS Metrics, Annual Budgeting, Financial Forecasting, Headcount, Equity, Dilution, and Fundraising – and how all of these drive business performance and growth.

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