Empowering Consumers Through Smart Bidding: A Q&A with Boris Zhukov, Co-Founder and CEO of LetYouKnow

I’m Boris Zhukov, CEO of LetYouKnow, Inc., a Seattle based marketplace that empowers consumers to take control of their spending by using their favorite AI to research new car deals, then bid below their best offer on LetYouKnow.com and get an instant result that can help them save money.

Here’s how it works. A buyer builds the exact car they want by selecting or searching for the make, model, trim and other configuration parameters, then bids their own price. Dealers do not see who is bidding, so the bid remains completely anonymous until it is accepted. If the bid clears a dealer’s hidden threshold, our algorithm ranks the available matches and produces an instant match. The buyer in the accepted case then has already prepaid $799 toward the bid, and we reveal the matched dealership where the rest of the transaction takes place. The $799 is a prepayment toward the accepted bid price, not an additional charge on top of it. It demonstrates serious buyer intent, supports the anonymous bidding process and helps provide access to prices that may not otherwise be available. If the bid is not accepted, there is no charge and the buyer can try again.

For accepted bids, every dealer and platform fee is already included in the bid. The only things ever added separately are government fees that everyone pays regardless, such as tax, title and registration. If shipping is available for the buyer’s build, it is also included in the bid when using the Price Bid option. Otherwise, the buyer simply picks up the vehicle directly from the dealer. Either way, there are zero hidden fees, full stop.

A few words on our marketplace history. We founded LetYouKnow in February 2019 and are based in Seattle. Our matching technology is protected by U.S. patents and today we work with 150 franchise dealerships nationwide. We are now in the process of opening the marketplace to other industries, so customers will soon be able to bid on restaurant gift cards, oil changes, alignments, brake pad changes, haircuts, paintball and airsoft sessions, dental cleanings, grocery store gift cards and much more. The goal is to give consumers the ability to save time and money as if they had negotiated hard for weeks, except they didn’t.

At the same time, we enable businesses to maximize their profits by bringing them customers for free, without revealing their thresholds or interfering with their existing sticker transactions. It is a win for everyone involved, rather than a win for one party at the expense of another. A true win win win across consumers, sellers and the marketplace itself.

By building a highly sophisticated marketplace ecosystem, we have positioned ourselves to help virtually any business or startup acquire customers without requiring them to do anything or pay us anything. In doing so, we address one of the most fundamental questions founders face from investors and venture capitalists. How will you generate revenue?

That is one of the powerful outcomes of creating a system where consumers save money, businesses grow efficiently and entrepreneurs have a scalable path to acquiring and growing their customer base without disrupting their existing initiatives.

Have near zero expectations of success, but keep that to yourself. Have infinite patience and perseverance to turn those near zero odds into something extraordinary over the long term. Then roll up your sleeves, work uber hard and find a way for others to do the same.

On top of that, be open to and embrace risk. A lot of entrepreneurs treat risk as something to be avoided, but I see it the opposite way. If you do not take risks, you become risk averse and end up pursuing fewer initiatives that can help you pivot and build something extraordinary. Being risk averse is its own kind of risk. Over time, you tend to become more idle and that passive strategy can make you irrelevant, as if you took the greatest risk of all at the end of the day by not taking any