An Overview Of NuBrakes As An On-Demand Marketplace For Automotive Repair Services

28 Jan 2023 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:05

In this briefing, the speaker provides a concise status update on NuBrakes (also referred to as Newbreak), an on‑demand automotive repair marketplace. The company now operates in six metro areas—Austin, Houston, Dallas‑Fort Worth, San Antonio, Atlanta, and Nashville—and is at the Series A financing stage, having raised capital in January 2021. Over the past six months the business underwent a major contraction: it reduced its market presence from nine cities (including Orlando, Tampa, and Miami) to six, and cut headcount from roughly 120 employees to about 55. This downsizing was driven by an unsustainable cash burn of $650 k per month, which was slashed to $40 k per month through cost‑saving measures. A previously secured Series B term sheet was withdrawn, prompting the company to focus on financial discipline. The speaker emphasizes that the current goal is to achieve profitability within the next three months.

Chapters

Can you all kind of give us like an overview of Newbreak, where you are today, and then maybe kind of break it down as a marketplace? Sure. So we currently, we are operating in 6 metro markets, those 6 markets being Austin, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Atlanta, and Nashville. And we are at the Series A stage from a financing standpoint, which we raised back in January of 2021. So actually, 2 years ago at this point. And what I'll tell you is we've actually had, particularly over the last 6 months, like a pretty actually tumultuous ride where, you know, 6 months ago we were actually operating in 9 markets including Orlando, Tampa, and Miami, and we were at about 120 people from a headcount standpoint. And over the last 6 months, we've just had to make significant adjustments. And because we were burning way too hot, the capital markets quickly changed. We had a Series B term sheet that was pulled from us. And I didn't think that, you know, there was writing on the wall, you know, the writing was on the wall to me that, hey, there's not going to be a, you know, care package of capital that's just dropped down from the sky. We've gotta change 'cause we were at under 6 months of cash. And so we were in a pretty desperate position. So over the last 6 months or so, we've been heavily focused on improving our overall financial position. You know, we were burning like 6 months ago, $650,000 a month. We're now burning like $40,000 a month. We're going to get profitable here in the next 3 months or so. And we now have a headcount. We went from a headcount of 120 to about 55. So that was also quite painful as well. So it's definitely not all, you know, flowers and roses, a lot of challenges, and certainly a roller coaster along the way, which we can talk all about that as well. But that's kind of a high-level overview on where we're at as a business right now. And our next big milestone is getting profitable.