In Day 1–1000, we follow founders through the raw, unfiltered journey of company-building: the early scrambles, the quiet breakthroughs, the painful pivots, and the milestones that shape what a business becomes.
I first encountered Axel Peyriere, co-founder of Auto24, as an angel investor after he had shared one of my stories in his weekly LinkedIn tech news roundup. Peyriere is French and Australian. He loves people, food, music, travel, and cars.
After a decade travelling across Asia and Africa, Peyriere began angel investing in African startups in 2011—Bumpa, Monaco, Curacel, Termii, Grey and a few others are among his portfolio companies. In 2016, he founded a mobility startup, AfriCar, inspired, I believe, by his passion for cars.
Peyriere is my guest this week on Day 1–1000. He talks to me about how his startup went from being a lean network of 45 automobile classifieds’ websites to an asset-heavy used car marketplace operating in five African countries. The day of our interview marked 1,095 days since the company’s pivot from its first iteration as a digital classifieds platform to the launch of Auto24.
This is the story of Auto24 as told to .
Day 1: Classifieds
In 2016, my co-founder Fredrik [Orrenius] and I set out to build digital infrastructure for Africa’s used car market. I had worked across emerging markets in Asia and believed many of the conditions I saw there—fragmented supply, limited online marketplaces, and an absence of transactional trust—also existed in sub-Saharan Africa. Fredrik, who brought deep operational experience, joined me in building what became AfriCar Group.
We launched the company from Australia and rolled out 45 automotive classified websites across 45 African countries. Each website had a local name to build market-specific trust and avoid unnecessary branding costs. At the time, Facebook Marketplace had just launched, and OLX hadn’t yet penetrated much of sub-Saharan Africa. People were still buying and selling cars through neighbours or informal networks. Our classified sites offered a new layer of transparency, however basic.
The model was simple. We didn’t own the inventory. Sellers paid to boost their listings. Dealers paid for premium slots. It was lean, low-margin, and slow. But in many countries, we quickly became the number one or number two platform. When capital-heavy ventures like Rocket Internet’s CarMoody came and crashed, we survived. We were leaner. More local. Less fragile.
Then COVID hit.
Day 1460: Reinvention
The pandemic brought everything to a halt. Ad revenue disappeared. Dealers froze their marketing budgets. For a few weeks, it felt like the engine had stalled completely. But something unexpected happened. Car manufacturers and distributors—Toyota, CFAO, and others—started reaching out from markets like Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Zambia. They wanted help managing leads. They needed digital infrastructure. We said yes.
Those early B2B consulting engagements gave me a new perspective. I realised the opportunity wasn’t just in helping others digitise—it was in building a full-stack, transactional marketplace ourselves. I had seen the model work in other emerging markets. Kavak in Latin America. Cazoo in Europe. I knew we could do the same in Africa.
In 2022, Stellantis invested. That gave us the capital to pivot into what we’d long imagined but hadn’t yet built. That’s how Auto24 was born.
The idea was simple but ambitious. We would buy used cars from consumers and fleets, inspect and recondition them, attach warranties and refund policies, and resell them—this time with trust as the core product. We launched first in Côte d’Ivoire, where I already understood the market and spoke the language. Within three months, we had a working operation. Mechanics in garages. A showroom. A live website. The first ten cars sold.
We then expanded to Senegal, Morocco, Rwanda, and South Africa.
Day 1825: Building with local talent
Today, Auto24 employs 220 people across five countries. Our team sizes vary by market, from 30 to 80. Each operation is localised. There are no expats. All hires are local. Our managers, mechanics, sales reps, and marketers all come from the countries we serve. That’s a deliberate choice. You cannot build trust from the outside.
Each market behaves differently. In Côte d’Ivoire, consumers prefer Suzuki and Toyota. In Morocco, Peugeot dominates. In South Africa, it’s Ford and SUVs. Our pricing, messaging, and even our social media strategy adapt accordingly. Morocco doesn’t sound like South Africa, and our teams shouldn’t either.
Since pivoting, we’ve increased our revenue by x500. Today, we operate across several supply chains—consumer-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business. But the most powerful model is consumer-to-business-to-consumer. We buy cars directly from individuals, inspect and recondition them, then sell directly to other individuals. It’s cleaner. The margins are stronger. And most importantly, the trust flows both ways.
We were the first company in these markets to offer six-month warranties on used cars. We introduced refund policies—drive 200 kilometers and bring the car back if you’re not satisfied. That only works if you believe in your product. We do.
Our average vehicle sells for about $15,000. Inventory ranges from $7,000 to $100,000, but most sales are SUVs with automatic gearboxes. We’ve also started to push into EVs. We were among the first to do that in several countries. I believe it’s early, but necessary. The market will eventually shift. We want to be ahead when it does.
Present day
I’ve spent the last decade building and investing in emerging markets. Before Africa, I was investing in startups across Southeast Asia—Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar. What I saw in Asia ten to fifteen years ago is exactly what I see unfolding in Africa now. But here, the scale is bigger, and the velocity is faster.
People often underestimate how long it takes to build something that works. It took us six years of classifieds before we found true product-market fit. The pivot to Auto24 didn’t happen overnight. It came through resilience, a willingness to listen to what the market wanted, and the conviction to rebuild from the ground up.
When people ask me if I’ve ever wanted to quit, I tell them no. This is just the beginning.
An investor recently asked if I’d consider selling the company. I said no, again. I know what we’re building. I can double, triple, even quadruple it. That’s not ego. That’s execution.
I believe mobility is infrastructure. And infrastructure is something you build over decades, not funding cycles. Governments won’t build mobility systems fast enough. Private companies will. That’s why we’re not just selling cars. We’re building the operating system for used car ownership in Africa.
There will be more unicorns in African mobility. Auto24 be one of them.
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