Motobyo, the Online Automotive Marketplace, Featured on SIRIUS/XM “Wharton Business Daily”

During the discussion, Lekas revealed the origin of Motobyo and the vision behind the Philadelphia-based tech startup.

“Motobyo is a peer-to-peer marketplace, a little different than the digital entrants that we’ve seen in the last couple of years where it’s basically just a car dealership with a website,” said Lekas.

“It’s for consumers looking to get a little more than trade-in value for their vehicle and to get access to traditional dealer-only tools like extended service contracts, financing, things that typically you had to go to a dealer to get. All of the benefits that help the buyer and the seller to a better final outcome.”

Motobyo, which launched this past July in Philadelphia as its first market, will soon be expanding into other markets.

“There are 40-plus million US vehicle transactions done every year, that’s a very, very steady market and there’s about 13 million that are sold peer-to-peer every year,” Lekas said.

“I’m not talking about classics or exotics, but the meat of the market regular cars. We see the number of vehicles traded into dealerships actually lowering and people looking to maximize their return. They’re paying the most they could possibly pay for a new car. Getting the most for your used car becomes important to them. What we see on the marketplace are 23 percent higher values than a typical trade-in value.”