83. Carsnip

Founders: Alastair Campbell, Stuart Noad and Mark Smithson
Founded: November 2014 (Launched May 2015)
Website: www.carsnip.com

The first of a number of ‘car-focused’ marketplaces in the list this year, Alastair Campbell, Stuart Noad and Mark Smithson founded Carsnip to fill a gap in the car search marketplace. Research showed them that every year, over four billion car buyers view adverts on untrustworthy aggregator ‘classified-ad’ type sites rather than car dealer websites. This led to wasted time, effort and most importantly money for both consumers and dealers.

Carsnip’s search engine directly connects active and qualified buyers to a dealer that works for them rather than keeping them on a website crowded with adverts. Car dealers choose to advertise their cars on a pay-per-click basis, which uses a relevance score so only cars that are relevant to the buyer are advertised, with Carsnip receiving a referral fee from its partners for services such as buying, warranties and finance. After finding success with the model in the UK, the website is now indexing cars across more than 20 countries including Russia, Brazil and South Africa.

Currently live in beta mode, the site already has 100 dealers pre-registered and has ambitions to have 25% of the UK’s 10,000 dealers signed up by the end of 2016. After a formal launch on 24 May, Carsnip will focus on expanding into new territories and building new tools for its customers. Backed by $1m in angel funding, the company is meeting a growing need in an increasingly murky market.