Two cars belonging to a grandmother in Germany. That is where, by the company's own legend, Auto1 begins. Christian Bertermann tried to help her sell them and found himself buried under offers that smelled wrong: lowballers, strangers, haggling with no rules. He has described the used-car trade as unprofessional, and the story goes that this irritation, more than any grand plan, pushed him to build a business.
He was not a car man by training. Bertermann studied business administration at the University of Mannheim and then went to the fast world of Berlin start-ups, where he ran product at CityDeal and then international product at Groupon. His future partner, Hakan Koç, came at it from another angle: a law degree from Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, followed by a stint inside Rocket Internet and a product job at the furniture retailer home24.
What nobody expected from two product people was how physical the business would be.
Together they founded Auto1 in Berlin in 2012. The idea sounds almost boring now. A private seller enters a car, the company makes a fast offer, the car is inspected, and then it is sold on to a dealer through an online marketplace. But that boring idea attacked the exact thing Bertermann had felt at his grandmother's side: the seller's fear of being cheated, and the dealer's fear of buying blind.
What nobody expected from two product people was how physical the business would be. Cars have to be collected, stored, checked and moved across borders. Auto1 became a logistics company wearing a software jacket, with hundreds of branches where sellers can drive in.
It also became a company that needed enormous amounts of money. In 2016 it launched Autohero to sell cars directly to consumers, and in 2018 it set up a financing venture with Allianz and Deutsche Bank. The roads were not always smooth: in 2021 German press questioned how those two banks had dealt with investors linked to Northern Cypriot banks. That was an allegation from reporters, not a finding.
On 4 February 2021 the company listed in Frankfurt, planning to raise about EUR 1.8bn, much of it earmarked for Autohero. Forbes soon estimated each founder at roughly USD 1.3bn on paper. By 2025 the group reported revenue of EUR 8.17bn and says it moves about 3,000 vehicles a day. SoftBank still held about 14.8% at the end of 2025, with Bertermann at 12.7% and Koç at 9.1%.
The quiet lesson sits at the start. A billion-euro company began as someone trying to do a small favour for a relative and noticing how badly the market treated her. If you want a big idea, start where an ordinary person you love got treated unfairly.