#36: SPACs and COVID Winners with Shift Technologies Co-CEO, George Arison

The Razor’s Edge

Happy new year! We kick 2021 off on the Razor's Edge by looking at a couple of the biggest trends from 2020 – COVID market distortions and SPACs. Our guest is George Arison, Co-CEO of Shift Technologies, an online used car seller. Used cars were a surprisingly hot market in 2020, in part spurring Shift to move up their calendar to go public by a year. They went public via a SPAC. So our conversation centers on the two topics; how wild was 2020 and how do you plan for the following year; and why go public with a SPAC and what was that like?

Topics Covered

• 2:30 minute mark – Background on George and on Shift
• 7:30 – Where does the value add or competitive advantage come in?
• 12:00 – What the “value” part of the used car market looks like
• 14:15 – How Shift interacts with/competes with dealers
• 18:00 – What 2020 has looked like for Shift
• 29:00 – How the go-public plan shifted for Shift in 2020
• 33:00 – The SPAC fit and the questions raised
• 37:00 – What do SPAC negotiations look like?
• 40:00 – Surprises in the public market
• 43:30 – Planning for 2021 after the COVID rush
• 49:00 – What about the COVID hangover