TikTok recently shared about the car community on their platform, and it's nothing short of staggering.

89% of TikTokers now express an interest in cars and their main car hashtag is experiencing +25% year-on-year growth in video views!

That changes a lot with car ownership.

Car buyers now prefer to watch other people's reviews of the cars they want to buy.

They also found that many within their auto community are ride-or-die fans - strong 'brand loyalists' who prioritise a car's brand, reputation, and heritage.

This makes platforms like TikTok the go-to place where auto brands can reach their future consumers and actually create their next generation of brand advocates.

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Well how does Autohaven come into this big boy play?

By creating an environment for car enthusiasts to share visual and textual content about cars and showing the same to the right audience.

I know it sounds easier said than done, but we have a plan for this and it's different to TikTok's "post about a car and put these tags" strategy. No, we'll go a few levels deeper than that.

TikTok has done a great job already. We will try to extend that and just for the car community. We do deserve nice things too.

So yes, in the near future you'll be able to share visual and textual car content, in a nice and structured way.

At the moment, you can already share images with text on our car feed, but we will be revamping that to a more complete social media for cars platform!

This past weekend, I went to a few of my friends with an appeal to raise some money to continue running Autohaven.

But more on that later. Let's backtrack a little and connect the dots.

- - -

Many a tales have been told about how many people took a bet on today's big tech companies and made a killing out of it.

And I often wish I was old enough to invest in Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitter and the many unicorns created after the 2008 financial crisis.

Well, today we are in the middle of another financial crisis after covid wrecked havoc on our economy and Russia annexed Ukraine added a few nails to it.

The world's economy hasn't recovered since then.

But one thing is constant - history repeats itself.

We are in an economic downturn, and life is hard everywhere, but also, that will be the birth of many unicorns.

Now, this is not to toot my own horn, I definitely do not even know if Autohaven will survive til the end of the year, but I know that I have a grand vision for it, and that I am going to put my whole in order solve a real problem in the auto industry, and make a killing for everyone involved.

Now back to my fundraising appeal.

- - -

After I personally messaged a few of my friends, a good portion of them happily agreed to raise some money for me.

I had a goal of just $10,000. They managed to get me $5350 in just 24 hours!

That is amazing and I am super grateful for that circle of friends.

And now I want to extend this opportunity to our early adopters, YOU in particular!

These were the terms:

Since we are still early stage, and haven't made any money yet, it doesn't make sense to raise on equity, or stake. Because we do not have any valuation.

So to make it easy, I fundraised in form of debt, or debt financing. Meaning I will get to pay back everyone within a specific timeframe - 6 months.

Specifically, I was requesting for an investment of $1000 from each one of them, but more or less is welcome. And on my end I will pay back with 10% interest.

They have contributed in denominations greater than $1,000, but also in less. I have received $500, $200, $100 and even $50. And all are much appreciated!

And what is more, and was totally unexpected, I have also received donations! I am super grateful for this team.

So now they are going to be forever grafted into Autohaven, and will hopefully be remembered many years to come as people that helped Autohaven be, from the very early stages.

On my end, I will work very hard to pay them all in 6 months time, from the time of their contribution. And I will be updating everyone on our progress monthly, starting with October!

This is the true spirit of Ubuntu.

And I am now committed more than ever to make Autohaven work so that everyone gets their hard earned money back, with some sweet interest.

- - -

Just for reflection, this is what we have achieved since launching in March this year:

1. A public chat feed with posts, comments and likes. Kinda like Twitter but with lesser features

2. A custom newsletter system where we have published 20 long form and deep dive articles. It's kinda like Substack and I plan to roll it out to all users to they can write and document their car ownership journeys.

3. The ability to create different kinds of accounts, starting with personal and then business accounts that can have teams.

4. Generated about 6,000 individual cars, from the make all the way to the different trims and specs.

- - -

So what's the plan for the future?

Put simply, I want to make Autohaven the "Google search" for cars.

You will be able to find anything in relation to a very specific car, in a specific Geographical location.

More updates on this in the coming weeks! (hint: this is the golden egg)

- - -

To wrap up, as part of my promise, I will be selling some of my stakes once we are profitable, so my friends and Autohaven users can have some stake in the business too and make some good returns out of it.

But I only want to do that once we are profitable, reducing the risks for you.

And so I am opening this chance to you as well.

If you'd like to invest in Autohaven in form of debt, and get paid back in 6 months with a 10% interest, then you can reply to this email and I will get back to you with the details.

And if you'd like to call me as well, for more details, I am happy to schedule a call with you. Just reply here.

Together we rise!


Kaka Ruto,
CEO, 
Autohaven

I shared some exciting news on the socials today.

We just rolled out about 6,000 cars on Autohaven!

You can check them on autohaven.io

And with that, comes with an opportunity to invest! I will be sharing more details about that tomorrow, to the email list that everyone is on, including you!

So nothing to do yet. Just chill out, maybe read the Twitter post about the launch here.

But more importantly, our terrific writer Sir Robert has been hard at work on our Engine Series and brought us the following two deep articles on Overhead Valve Engines and Chevrolet’s Small-Block V8 Engine!

Every man remakes himself, like a master sculptor chisels away at the marble of his own character. This is our remake.

At the beginning, I envisioned Autohaven to be a social network for car conversations, very niche. And so I built our car feed, basic as it is, to test the waters.

It works, but it's not so great without a community. A social network is as good as its people/users. So for us to have a great social network, we need people on it.

So I've been chiseling away at various solutions to this nagging problem, and I am happy to report that I think I have found a possible answer to that million-dollar question.

The Bank
Yes, I think the bank is the answer. The bank of car intelligence, from the manufacturer, everyone in between, to the final car owner and user of the car.

To illustrate, have a look at one piece that I recently added to the bank.

It shows a nimble yet probably the most important piece of information you need when making the decision to buy a car - the features and specs you will get in return for your hard-earned money.

And this is just one piece of the cake, a lot goes into it, as I discovered.

And so I am putting together massive data bank of everything cars, which perfectly fits into the vision I had for Autohaven when I started.

Also, I am not dumping in there everything I find on the interwebs, I am critically looking for that needle in the haystack, to present to you the most important bits that you need to know.

The Rack
Another probably most important piece to this is the rack, the thing that organizes all this information.

I realize that anything can be found on the web, but the difference in the quality of delivery can be as little as how that information is organized and presented to you. It matters a lot. Which is why we are seeing AI eating Google's cake live.

So I have put some good thoughts and efforts into how this should be organized and presented to you. Including a smart way to search and find what you're looking for!

The Date
When is this coming live? Well, some of it is already available on autohaven.io, on the homepage. But that's like only 1/4 of it. I am testing out the remaining 3/4 and it should be landing on Autohaven next week, God-willing!

So watch out, keep a tab, notify a friend.

I do honestly think we are onto something here, and I hope you and I do get something out of it, and all of us win!

Otherwise what do you think of the bank? Is it a good answer to this problem? Let me know in the comments/replies. Or join the conversation on Twitter.

As always, thanks a lot for your support, much love and appreciation 🫶


Kaka

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On the other hand, my superb writer, Sir Robert, has been hard on the works writing a lot of good stuff about car engines! I am really enjoying his writing. 

I am sharing his latest down below, please have a read and share as well! :)

Hi everyone!

Hope y'all all had a great week!

I did, my tweets did :), and Autohaven did. Some big news will be coming soon, stay tuned.

Back to the topic. You might have already seen this as it went viral on the socials yesterday, but if you missed it, here's the latest scoop:

I wrote up a decent story of what my car has done for me from the day I purchased it - including how it saved me from two wild situations on the road, and people seemed to like the narration!

It's racked up to 2.8k likes and 245k views, becoming one of my best performing tweets ever. You can read the story here

So what's this all about?

Basically, I am selling my very first car! Yup, the one you all read about when you subscribed to this newsletter, it's looking for a new home.

In quick summary, it's a 2014 Audi A4 Allroad, Premium Plus trim, sleek and in perfect condition. Only driven it for 23k miles as I'm out of the country. My asking price is Ksh 2.8M ($21,700), negotiable.

I shared more about the features here, including why I am selling.

Just respond to this email if you re interested and we can talk!