Jared Kugel, founder and CEO of the e-commerce website Tire Agent, started his entrepreneurial journey with a foul thought.
Kugel had been working for his household’s tire distribution enterprise for greater than a decade when, in 2017, he pitched a enterprise capitalist on making a search engine for tire and wheel merchandise. To his shock, the VC favored it a lot that the agency provided him $100,000 in seed funding and a spot at its New York Metropolis-based tech incubator, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.
Regardless of having no tech expertise, Kugel accepted the provide and rapidly adopted the business’s “fail quick” mentality. Halfway by means of this system, one of many agency’s companions requested him, “When was the final time you ever heard of a search engine promoting the enterprise?” He replied, “I don’t know, Lycos?” The investor then mentioned, “Precisely, and the way way back was that?”
So he pivoted.
When the accelerator’s demo day rolled round just a few months later, Kugel pitched buyers on a brand-new enterprise, a cell tire installer.
He obtained zero funding commitments.
So Kugel went out on his personal however quickly realized that this plan additionally had critical flaws. As a way to develop, the entrepreneur thought, his tire-installing enterprise would want to develop its providers to a number of cities by franchising. However it was nowhere close to prepared to take action.
At this level, Kugel says he was “flat broke” (we’ll forgive the tire pun!) and surviving “off of crackers and jelly” as a result of he was taking such a minuscule wage to maintain the corporate afloat. “My choices have been both make it work or turn out to be homeless,” he says.
This wasn’t entrepreneurial hyperbole: Kugel obtained a foreclosures discover from his financial institution in late 2018.
Then, he caught a break. A bunch of New York Metropolis-based angel buyers, understanding the urgency of his monetary state of affairs, provided to assist him put collectively one other spherical of pre-seed fundraising.
Now armed with $750,000, Kugel once more modified course, going into street hazard safety. Issues went a bit extra easily the third time round. He was capable of type a strategic relationship with Allstate and drum up curiosity from about 100 retailers. However the firm, he says, was nonetheless rising too slowly as a result of it was working underneath a business-to-business-to-customer mannequin that relied “on different individuals promoting the product.”
So Kugel determined to pivot one final time by beginning an e-commerce enterprise referred to as Tire Agent that offered tires and wheels over the web. Lastly, he hit gold; Tire Agent made $18,000 in gross sales in its first month, $90,000 in its second, and $120,000 in its third. After seeing this progress, Kugel’s buyers gave him extra funding.
Assured that it could be the thought to stay, Kugel began so as to add options that may higher resolve buyer ache factors corresponding to how costly tires are to exchange and the way troublesome they are often to put in. Ultimately, he found what he calls Tire Agent’s secret sauce: affordably priced tires, plus free same-day or next-day transport paired with an enormous community of set up companions.
Since 2020, Tire Agent has offered greater than 2 million tires—which may price anyplace from about $40 to $800 every—and now makes greater than $150 million yearly, in keeping with the founder. The corporate’s income has elevated 563% over the previous 5 years, landing it on the Inc. 5000 list in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
“In case you are the identical enterprise tomorrow that you’re at present, you’re in all probability not going to achieve success,” Kugel says.
—Annabel Burba, Editorial Assistant
This text originally appeared on Quick Firm’s sister web site, Inc.com.
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