Luke: [00:00:00] You are listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist. This one features Zach Shaka. Zach’s an entrepreneur, creator, and consumer advocate, best known as the co-founder and CEO of Car Edge. Zach partnered with his father, Ray Shaka, a 40 year auto industry veteran to level the playing field for car buyers by providing transparent negotiation strategies, data tools, and AI driven car buying agents.

In this episode, we discussed how Zach and his father teamed up years ago to put their knowledge of the industry to work, creating content to help people navigate the challenge of car buying without getting taken to the cleaners, how their content creation became a car buying business, and a dealer grading index for people to have more informed positions and an easier.

Experience buying cars and negotiating prices and things like that, and how Car Edge has been leading on the AI front, by integrating AI and dealer transparency, including having AI agents buying cars for customers and users,

It’s quite an entrepreneurial journey, an interesting tech story, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed having it with Zach. And now for this week’s episode [00:01:00] of The Brave Technologist.

Zach, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How you doing today?

Zach: Doing great, Luke. So grateful to be here.

Luke: Yeah, no, this is fun. I’ve been looking forward to this. I kind of stumbled upon, uh, uh, you and your dad on courage through YouTube and then saw what you guys were doing and, and it looked really, really interesting and like, I hadn’t really seen anybody do this and, the auto side of things before.

Can we give a little bit of like backstory? So cars was kind of born out of a real. Consumer pain point, how did car become a thing?

Zach: I mean, actually my pain and my frustration was less about the car buying process and more about the fact that my dad was never around.

So my passion in doing this, what we do at Car Edge actually is rooted in that. So I founded my business Car Edge six years ago with my dad. He is my co-founder, which is really fun. My dad spent 43 years selling cars. So that was his career. And growing up, I didn’t see my dad a lot. Luke, he was working.

Yeah. I [00:02:00] didn’t really understand it at the time. I mean, like, I had a concept of like, okay, you gotta work to pay the bills and stuff like that. But he would leave early in the morning and he would turn to me, my sister and my mom, and he’d be like, all right kids, I’m gonna go work a half day. , Half day was a 12 hour day.

Um, and so he worked. A lot. And growing up I really resented that. , I was really close to my mom and my dad, you know, was, was working. You know, he didn’t have a college degree. I also don’t have a college degree. And his whole mantra was to just provide the things to his family that they didn’t even know they wanted yet.

And so he was working his butt off trying to provide. And then sadly, almost nine years ago, my mom passed away, uh, from lung cancer and it was like. Three months after my mom passes away, then my dad retires. And I was like, what? Like, no man. Yeah, you just like worked your whole life away. And we’re not present and like we’re working to provide, which we appreciated, but like now that mom’s died, now you’re gonna like chill.

I just, it really Right. I had a lot of dissonance and so I went to my [00:03:00] dad and, and like we started to repair our relationship and ultimately Luke, that’s where I learned. The car business. Sure. Like buying a car really hard, takes advantage of people, like not a good situation whatsoever. It takes advantage of the staff that work in the industry as well.

My dad’s pay plan was tied to how much gross profit he held. He could hold more gross profit by doing things to customers that would keep them at the dealership longer, but his quality of life would go down. And my dad was one of those people who tried not to do that, and ultimately I think it held him back in his career.

And so. Lots of energy for me and passion in this tied up in, in that idea that like, it’s just so inefficient, it’s so opaque. it’s unfair. It’s just really unfair to everyone involved. And so for the past six years, I’ve been on this crusade with my dad, started with YouTube, now we do a bunch of other stuff.

Just trying to, trying to make it more fair, efficient, and transparent for, for everyone. Consumers, the people in the industry. And then I’ll just like posit this thought, it’s just really hard to get people to care in the industry. ‘cause they make so much money the way it currently. Oh

Luke: yeah.

Zach: So it’s like there’s like.

I don’t know. It’s [00:04:00] just hard, hard to get them to, to realize like, oh yeah, we should do it a better way.

Luke: There are a few industries that are like this too, but like advertising was very similar too, where like it proliferates and kind of scales on these like user hostile, behaviors that just become the norm.

Yeah. And so like the deals are structured that way. The incentives are all misaligned and then it’s really hard to get anything within that space to move unless you have momentum behind you. From elsewhere, right? Like usually from where the customers or users are, whatever. Were you in the auto industry at all to you before or did you kind of just pick this up through, through what you saw with your dad?

Zach: The most exposure I have to working at a car dealership is, we had some like really big snow storms in Maryland back when I was a teenager, and I pushed snow off of cars for, for like two or three days. So no, I’ve never worked in a dealership. My dad told me growing up, he said there were two things that were off limits, no tackle football and no working in the car business.

And so I worked in the car business, but I do it in a very different way. Uh, yeah, he was adamant like the quality of life’s just [00:05:00] not worth it. Can you make money? Sure, yeah. But the quality of life isn’t there. And it’s not not good.

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Luke: That’s one of the things that really kind of spoke to me is it’s like watching your guys’ rapport and your dad has just got like, all this knowledge and you guys together kind of work out these scenarios of like car buying, you know, situations and stuff. But you can tell that there’s like an energy there where your dad just wants.

People to know about this stuff, and you do too. And, and it’s really, I think it’s a good service too. I mean, like, how did the business evolve for you guys?

Zach: Yeah, so I’ve always been passionate on trying to help people make this [00:06:00] process better. That’s like definitely been on my mind, but like I said at the outset, I really wanna make the industry more transparent, more fair, more efficient.

So we’ve had so many opportunities to make Car Edge, what I’ll call like a lifestyle business. Just me, my dad, a couple people helping us out. We make some YouTube videos. It is just us hanging out. We have a lot of fun. So, you know, that would’ve been, and, and even some days when trying to build Car Edge into, the big, big company that is, industry changing.

You know, when, when some of those days are, are tricky. I think back to how nice it would be to just relax and do a little lifestyle company, but. You know, we’ve really taken on a path where we’re trying to have a big impact on the industry. and so the businesses that we’ve built are, are pretty interesting.

We’ve built out some tools for consumers, so they pay for access. So instead of the consumer being the product, they actually just pay and we give them all the data that, that a car dealer has. We give them all the market insights, all the, uh, market inte. They can go negotiate better. So we’d provide those paid consumer experiences.

We provide a paid car buying service as well. So if you’re leasing or buying a car, we can provide a, a [00:07:00] car buying service where we have, a whole stable of former salespeople and sales managers that’ll do the heavy lifting for you. So that’s another paid service. And then we make money, fortunately, from all the media that we produce.

You know, I can’t turn ads off over on YouTube and for many years that is underwritten aspects of growing the business. So. We’ve built out some interesting angles to the business, but all through the lens of just trying to make it more fair and efficient.

Luke: How is scaling up the, like the car buying service, I imagine that’s something people, get a lot of insight into, but that’s one of the other things too that’s been really interesting to see about you guys is that like you can totally see how one, .

you guys have this like bedrock of knowledge, right? Like around the industry and how that kind of becomes productized into what you’re offering at a bigger scale. But then I would imagine too that if you’re helping with negotiating for people, there’s probably a lot of data points and a lot of volume of, customer flow, deal flow that’s going through there that you guys can also leverage into what you’re seeing.

That’s what I feel like I see when I, when I’m looking at what you guys are offering, like, how long has that part been going on and like is [00:08:00] it something that you guys have seen a lot of good growth in?

Zach: So what’s been so interesting there, Luke, your intuition spot on, there’s a ton of data that’s that’s able to be captured in a, in a car deal.

What’s interesting is kinda like the evolution of how this business, how it shows up for us, like what, what it actually is. And what I mean by that is, the first ever variant of this service was me and my dad calling dealers doing the work. Like that’s what we did for, for a year. I love it. I mean, it was crazy.

My dad went from being retired to working harder than I think he had ever worked before looking at me like. What are we doing? Why am I calling dealers across the country? You know, this is nuts. We hired out, we got people, human people to, to support it. Incredible members of our team that are still here today that, that have been helping for five plus years.

thousands upon thousands of customers. It was about a year ago that I saw the opportunity for us to start to. In AI agents, and it was in July of last year that we had our first ever AI car deal negotiated. Wow. So we built an AI agent that gets an email alias and phone alias then, and a [00:09:00] corpus, you know, essentially a harness of all the intelligence we have and a corpus of all that data to then go represent a consumer and negotiate via text and email a car deal.

And that was July of last year that we did the first one of those. Well, now. Fast forward a year, almost a year later, we’ve done over a hundred thousand of those negotiations, including the first ever agent to agent car deal, because yes, car dealers are starting to build sales agents as well, which is so fascinating.

And to your point around data, now it’s structured and that has been a huge, huge lift for, for our business, and quite frankly, from my ambition of bringing, you know, transparency and fairness and efficiency to auto. Agents have given us the ability to show an audit log of all communications. Who said what the gotchas there is?

No, he said, she said, there’s like, the dealer said this and the agent replied that, and it’s all back in a database. So that’s been like, you know, go back again to where I, where we started. I was sleeping on my dad’s couch. We found the business, we’re working 12 hour days together now to help people buy cars.

We build out a team. The team supports us for [00:10:00] many years. And then, you know, the big push with AI and with tech there has been transformative for, for our efforts. And, a really, you know, I didn’t wake up six years ago. We could say, I’m gonna start an AI company far from right. I lucked, I lucked into this, but it’s been really awesome.

Luke: But it’s one of those things where you can see the progression, looking at this and see how it could actually be like really good this is a use case for ai. That like really makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you guys are building out this corpus of like deal knowledge, and, I mean, this is the other thing that’s like super interesting and I, I’m kind of selling like I’m.

Like talk in your books now, but like, one of the things that was super interesting about watching your guys’ show is that, you know, you’ll pull up the, the screen and be like, yeah, we see like this much inventory across the country that’s been on the lot for this many days. It seems like you guys are coming up with like really good insights that can help with users getting the best deal and like going in as informed buyers.

‘cause that’s like one of those things where. It jumped out to [00:11:00] me when I’m looking, ‘cause I’ll be looking for a car and then I’m like, oh yeah, I’m gonna, I see one I want and then I’ll go see like, oh, whoa, like there’s a wild rating here. And, and they’re adding, you guys break it down to where you’re like, okay, like they add this many fees on, typically on average or whatever, and you’re like.

Damn. Okay. Like, so you can either go into that conversation informed that that’s gonna happen and prepare for it, or just go somewhere else. The thing is like super interesting to see how that’s going. How is the industry responding to this? Because I would imagine that, ethical players probably love it, but like I would imagine that, there’s a big middle there probably that that’s.

I don’t know what, what, what is the reflex that people have in the industry when they find out about this?

Zach: The industry is, split as you mentioned. There are some operators out there who would much rather, continue to have dark corners in the office that people can’t see to and, and understand how the business works.

And then there is the, large majority that want this level of transparency, have been begging for this level of transparency, and quite frankly, have been. Asking their partners in the [00:12:00] industry to champion it and provide, quite frankly, a commercial incentive to be transparent, to be leading with, fairness and efficiency.

And the reason I say commercial incentive is because auto’s been. Bastardized to a degree by third party marketplaces that have traditionally put great deal badges on cars that are obviously not great deals when you go to the dealership and the price change by $10,000. Like bait and switch advertising has been a thing in auto when in all these other industries, the FTC and state ags take action and auto.

For years it had been just totally abandoned. The reason, the timing for our business and the, wave of change that we’re trying to bring is so, so strong And, and so, uh, timely is because the FTC has been taking a lot of action recently in auto sending letters to, 97 dealership groups, totaling over 200 individual dealerships saying, Hey, clean up your act, including four of the six major public groups.

state ags have taken bigger actions than ever before in Maryland, for example, and AG took an action against Lindsay Automotive Group [00:13:00] for. Four years up to $75 million in charges that customers paid are eligible for refunds back to them. Wow. Because, because they bought products they didn’t understand that were forced, et cetera.

The state of New York just had a big one, four and a half million dollars back to Nissan customers who had lease buyouts that then had added fees that were illegal. They were just straight up illegal. So there’s a a lot of momentum to bring transparency. And then I think what’s interesting is the data that we’re able to collect, to your point, consumers now have it at their fingertips.

They know which dealers charge a dock fee that’s higher than their competition. They know which dealers charge add-ons and do bait and switch pricing. This information thanks to what we’ve built with these agents that have shopped dealers over a hundred thousand times. Creates a corpus, creates, creates a database that then, this is my doing, this is my thinking.

Let’s not hide it. Let’s like put it out into the public. if someone is operating in a way that’s honest, they’ll love this. And if someone’s operating in a way that’s dishonest, they’re gonna lose business. And that should be a commercial [00:14:00] incentive to clean up their act. At least that’s my core belief.

Luke: Well it’s interesting too ‘cause like. This idea of like having agents, out there negotiating even with other agents I’d imagine it’s kind of appeals to some people. Like where do you see, like, the business growing? Do you think that there’ll always be kind of like a demand for that human, in the loop with the, the process with what you guys are doing?

Or do you see it all just being agents eventually?

Zach: No, I think humans will be in the loop. The average transaction price for a car is almost $50,000, a new one. So I think when, geez. Yeah, I know. So I think when someone is going to spend $50,000, they wanna have, at least access to be able to pick up the phone and call someone.

and so I think for us, our business models. It’s pretty clear it’s find the good operators in the marketplace and align with them and go deeper into the experience. You know, Carvana is another reason why, even if dealers don’t like what Car Edge is doing, by bringing transparency, they better listen and they better get on the bandwagon.

Because Carvana, traditionally, a used car dealer, has bought eight new car dealerships in the past year, and they are now the highest [00:15:00] performing Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep Ram dealerships in the United States. And why is Carvana winning? Because they provide an awesome, transparent experience. So like my goal, Luke, and the business goal is find the good operators out there, which to be clear is not something that you can pay to be perceived as a good operator at Car Edge.

It’s what’s your grade based on our shopping, our mystery shopping of your dealership. you know, and then, and then align with them and go really deep and say. You have the opportunity to provide a Carvana like experience. Car edge is your conduit to do that. Here’s what you need to guarantee to me.

You’re gonna do to our customer. you’re gonna give them a good experience. They’re gonna be in and out in under 60 minutes. the value for the car they’re buying or the car they’re trading doesn’t change. Like these are very. onesies and twosies, like they should be pretty easy, for an operator Yeah.

To, to work with us on. But that’s the business model is, you know, scale those relationships. And then ultimately I think, you know, enable with technology as much as possible. So the dealer that we did, the first agent to agent deal, I do think that’s an aspect of the future. I don’t think every transaction will be that far from it.

I feel like right now [00:16:00] is 1995, the first car internet lead is coming through. You know, like we have the opportunity to design this and. I always say if, if we designed it in such a way where the sales AI agent has to go talk to the dealership manager, AI agent, to ask the manager what price they can do, like if we, if we just, we just redo all the things that are broken about right now with humans, with agents, instead, we designed it wrong.

So really excited about the work that we’re doing at the tip of the spear there to make it more fair, transparent, and efficient.

Luke: Seems really cool too. ‘cause like there’s a bunch of other areas that are kind of cumbersome in the process that AI could benefit from. Like, everything from kind of like loans and, insurance and all that stuff too.

That kind of comes with it. That, I mean, it’s, it’s a like a full day thing, buying a car typically for people. I think it’s one of those things that people hate about it. So I think it’s really cool that you guys are attacking it that way. We’ve had folks on that have been on one side of kind of the EV market, right? Like they’re building out infrastructure, doing all [00:17:00] these interesting things over here. We’ve seen kind of this big push over the past, what, the year or two years into ev and, and one thing I noticed too is it seems like there’s, like, from your perspective.

Because you’re seeing kind of the buy and sell side of that, right? Like whether it’s you used, people that had EVs or, or whatever, like what’s the state of, kind of the EV market from what you’re seeing on your side where the actual, like rubber’s hitting the road with that is it something that like, I, I don’t know, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth.

I’m just super curious to, for your take on that. ‘cause you, you guys are seeing the numbers,

Zach: Yeah, the EV market has been insanely volatile over the past couple of years. You know, last year when federal tax incentives went away, there was a huge, huge, huge influx of EV sales, like as a percentage of all sales hit all time records here domestically in the United States, and then the months following.

It promptly fell off EV sales, you know, promptly fell off. And so where we sit now in, in June of 2026 is that new EV sales are not particularly high. You know, the, [00:18:00] the amount of demand for electric vehicles has fallen back significantly. We’ve seen many manufacturers actually cancel EV products, whether that be products that were already in market.

Probably the most, important one would be the Ford F-150 Lightning. that is one of the bestselling, vehicles in the United States of America. It’s the bestselling truck in the United States of America with the F-150. And so for Ford to move fast and come out with the F-150 lightning, and then only after a few years cancel it, I mean that’s, that’s a big emission that.

Okay. We made the wrong bet. And then there were other manufacturers like Ram, who for years said they were bringing their electric truck out and then ultimately never even brought it to market. So we’re seeing manufacturers pull back on electric vehicles and investments there, but it’s not, A broad brush. I mean, Subaru for example, many people probably don’t know this, but they just brought to market another electric, another two electric vehicles. Toyota’s brought out more electric vehicles. So there’s a bit of a mix in terms of how the automakers are thinking about it, but overall, sales are down.

Then used EV prices. They’re actually down significantly from their all time highs, but [00:19:00] they’ve actually held their value better. Than many alternative powertrain vehicles, meaning internal combustion engine vehicles because gas prices have been so high, Luke, so, mm-hmm. You know, if gas prices end up coming back down on the other side of the war with Iran, like maybe than ev prices become less, or you, you know, ev demand goes down even more.

So there’s kind of different dynamics in the new car side and used car side, but ev equals volatile, that’s for sure.

Luke: What do you think is the delta there, like, on adoption? Is it, is it, distance or range or, or is it preference or, I mean, I, I would imagine ‘cause you guys have like access, you’re helping to make deals.

Like are people coming in kind of on the fence and then, picking one or the other? Like from your point of view, is it, what, what’s the barrier? ‘cause I, I know they were pushing them. I mean, I’m in California, right? Like, and they were trying like all sorts of mandates around ev and, and we see it.

In my neighborhood. They just have all these like experiments going on all the time with charging stations and stuff like that, like all over the place. So I’m just kinda curious like, uh, uh, ‘cause you guys are there where the [00:20:00] customers are, like, what do you think is holding things back from greater adoption on that front?

Zach: Affordability.

Luke: Oh, really?

Zach: Yeah. Affordability. Interesting. That is, that is the number one thing. An electric vehicle costs significantly more than a hybrid powertrain vehicle or an internal combustion engine vehicle. And so until the, the cost of the vehicle goes down. Now that being, that being said, when subsidized by the federal government and when incentivized heavily by the automaker.

You can sell or particularly lease a lot of electric vehicles. That’s what a lot of people did was lease EVs. And that was a good, good call. And I encourage anyone who listens to this, it’s not, our car buying advice show, but. Please look at leasing at EV instead of buying it. The depreciation on them are crazy and the manufacturers are trying to be very aggressive.

Luke, with, lease programs to try and increase the residual value artificially so that you’re paying for less of the depreciation, so like they can get you into a better monthly payment. Kind of getting into some of the nitty gritty, but

Luke: no short, this is why. Price reason why

Zach: it [00:21:00] on

Luke: price? Yeah, yeah,

Zach: yeah,

Luke: yeah.

It’s price. Yeah. Because I think like, you know, people, everybody’s are, uh, driving cars and stuff. It’s, it is as good info. Like, and I think there’s a lot of just kind of one, there’s like this whole idea that, you know, what you see in the auto industry is kind of like a microcosm of what, what’s probably happening at a larger scale, or it hasn’t quite happened yet.

and also like, it’s one of those things where you’re, every, it, it hits everybody, right? Yeah. Like, um, everybody’s gotta. Gotta get a car and, or get around at least. And, uh, it, it, it’s useful info I think. I think too, you, you mentioned the average price of card, what, $50,000?

I mean like for a new car, what’s, what is going on in the auto industry? It seems like the cars aren’t like, doing anything more magical than they were before. Like what, what, what’s your take on what’s going on with the autos? Like it seems like. Used cars are, are going up in value, but like the new cars are high price.

Like, how, how do things get this way?

Zach: Uh, man, we’re gonna need a lot, lot of time for that. But the, the high level for how things high This Yeah. Yeah. High level. There was a chip [00:22:00] shortage back during the, the pandemic. The chip shortage led to about 15 million cars globally not being produced As a result of that, used car prices went up because there was still demand, but there weren’t enough new cars to meet that demand and manufactured decisions around which vehicles were to be produced became prioritized around profitability, which are more expensive, higher content, higher trim level options.

Now, fast forward, we’re still in this decade, and so, you know, there’s still some ramifications from that and there will be ramifications from what happened back during the pandemic all the way in into the 2030s. But on the new car side of things, one of the biggest ramifications is that realization that we can raise prices and not really change the content level, or in some cases actually reduce the content level within a vehicle.

And ultimately. Charge more and get away with it. And so we are still living in that moment. And it seems like I’ve been doing this for six years. It seems like the pendulum’s starting to swing back because auto sales have not only been flat recently, they’ve actually been down fairly significantly so far in [00:23:00] 2026 year over year.

So I think there is some pressure starting to build and you see automakers now coming out and saying, we’re gonna have, yeah. What pains me here is they’re saying by 2030 we’re gonna have sub $40,000 options, sub $30,000 options. and you also see some startups like Slate, for example, the Bezos backed startup, uh, with their EV truck.

Like, you know, they want a $20,000, $25,000 option. So I think there is a lot of pressure to bring cars back down to an affordable price point. that being said, it’s gonna take time it’s more important than ever before for people to do their research, before they buy a car.

Luke: Yeah, that’s the other thing.

It seems like there’s like this advent of like, I don’t know, these, these terms on these loans go so much longer too than it seems like, than they used to. Like people are, you’re just kind of saddled with a loan for your whole life on this thing. It’s just like wild, you know? what’s your vision for Car Edge, where do you see this going? Like, is this something, where’s your business now? Is it in the US primarily? And like, is this something you wanna take more globally or where, what’s the end game?[00:24:00]

Zach: Yeah. So yeah, we’re here only in the United States. Every day people are asking us if we’ll come to Canada. So I think if we ever expand, internationally, it’ll be up, up north into Canada. Then I think, you know, the, the goal’s, not necessarily global domination. I don’t, I don’t think you’re gonna see Car Edge Europe anytime soon.

I’d rather go really deep. Here in the United States, and I want to go beyond just helping people buy a car or sell a car. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity to remove, a lot of the ambiguity and challenges in car ownership as well, and bring this transparency and AI enablement there too. So, you know, my big vision, Luke, is the more I’ve become familiar with how the, the Frontier Labs use, Uh, how they help consumers, I should say, with things related to cars. The more, the more confident I am in the work that I’m doing. Like they just get a lot of stuff wrong. Consumer Reports did a great article a couple weeks ago now. they used AI to get help buying a car and it was just so fascinating ‘cause uh, Keith Berry is the guy who wrote it.

He’s like, testing Chad GPT and Chad JP t’s regurgitating fake consumer reports data right to him. Wow. And [00:25:00] he’s just like, yeah, and he’s writing about it, which is great, but it’s like. It’s just like, all right, there’s a lot of work to be done to build a harness around an LLM to make it effective. I am super pilled.

I think the future is gonna be AI enabled, don’t get me wrong. And I think there’s a ton of work and energy that needs to be put into that harness around it. And so I think of going really deep here in the United States of like buying a car, selling a car, repairing a car, getting parts for a car, maintenance for a car.

All of that can be something that consumers and the industry side can have. More efficiency, more transparency, more fairness. I, I’m a broken record. If we actually invest all the time in building that harness around this cool capability and, and, and enabling that, moving forward. So that’s where my head’s at and what I’m really passionate about is just like, keep taking time and friction outta the equation for people.

Luke: there’s so many ways for this to kind of branch out into, other ways that, I mean, like ca car is like, it’s a part of your family, right? Like, it’s something that’s like with you and you’re, you’re giving a lot of trust in that.

And you know, there’s a [00:26:00] lot of. Things that AI can help just like, make easier for people that have them, whether it’s maintenance or whatever. How is it working with your dad? Like you guys are like out there, what, like you, how often are you making content?

Every day. Is that

Zach: every day? Yeah. A week.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Five days

Zach: a week. Yeah. Monday through Friday. Uh, we take the weekends off. We didn’t use to, we. To, uh, go live every Saturday night, which was super fun. But eventually I was like, all right, I should spend time with my girlfriend. or no, he was like, you should spend time with me.

Um, but yeah, no, working with my dad’s. Awesome. Luke. I love it. I mean, it’s like. Everything that we do here in the business could, knock on wood, it doesn’t do this, but like, could just go away tomorrow. You know, like, who knows? Yeah. It could all go away. This entire experience would’ve been worth it.

Like that’s, that’s super, the relationship I had with my dad and, and it gives him something to do. Luke, he’s 75, this turned 75 and it gives him something to do. It’s like really cool to see him engaged and and excited. And at 75, like I think there was a fear I had that he. Especially with my mom gone, like, wouldn’t have that.

So it’s really

Luke: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a lot of idle time, [00:27:00] just super curious about this ‘cause like, you, so did you guys start like, with the content creation and then kind of get into the, that led to like the whole. Oh, let’s help people buy car.

How, what was the evolution there? I’m just super curious. ‘cause like we have a lot of content creators that, verify with Brave and we, we, we have that whole angle there. But it seems like, and, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you guys started with content and then it kind of evolved.

Is that, is that how it went?

Zach: Yeah, you’re spot on. My ambition was always to do way more than a YouTube channel. Mm-hmm. Like a hundred percent. Hopefully I’ve made that clear, like I want to make change in this industry because I’m passionate about all the frustration I had growing up and my dad wasn’t around and.

I’m an entrepreneur, I wanted to bootstrap this thing initially. Like, okay, how are we gonna get people to become aware of this? What’s the angle? And it was months of making content before the first video actually clicked and worked and like got some traction. And now it’s obviously a huge part of our, you know, what we do here at Car Edge.

But yeah, content was uh, you know, no pun intended, the vehicle into building out our [00:28:00] audience, building out our brand, and ultimately being able to deliver the products and services that we think have a chance to change the auto industry forever.

Luke: That’s awesome. I want the audience to kind of connect with you.

‘cause it’s, it’s one of those things where like, being an entrepreneur is like, it, it’s never a static process. And like the goal is, is if you’re adapting and, and, and may in surviving, kind of moves to thriving pretty well if you’re, if you’re, if you Bob, and we even kind of. Find that path and, you know, it seems like you guys are on your way there.

Like, where do people go now? Like if they want to, plug into what you guys are doing and, and, you know, with the content and with, uh, with courage and all that.

Zach: Thanks, Luke. Yeah, the entrepreneurial journey is an insane one, so I appreciate you saying that. Of course. Uh, of course. Yeah. If you’re interested in learning more about Car Edge, we’ve been super open about our journey building the business, so go to car edge.com.

Obviously you can see our, you know what we’re up to there. Everything that we do on YouTube, just search Car Edge or. You know, all the various social media platforms that’ll show up. And then I have a personal website, SHEF ska, just my last name, dot com. where I talk [00:29:00] about building the business. I’m, that’s so active.

There was a multi-year stretch there where I was really like heads down trying to build the business. but yeah, try to try my best to share some tidbits from what I’ve learned along the way. So chef ska.com is another place to connect.

Luke: It’s awesome, Zach. Well, I, I really appreciate you making the time.

this has been a super interesting conversation and, uh, I wish you guys best of luck with everything too. And, and I really hope folks check it out ‘cause it’s one of those really cool applications of AI that maybe you didn’t necessarily think of off the top of your head, but they’re actually out there in the market with it right now, so it’s super cool.

Um, so yeah, I’d love to have you come back too and like check back in on how things are going, um, in the future.

Zach: End of year is the best time to buy a new car. So maybe before the end of the year I can, uh, can yeah. Show some more tidbits. Appreciate it, Lisa.

Luke: Love it, man. Alright, thanks. Thanks for listening to The Brave Technologist Podcast.

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