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Garcia: Carvana is shifting focus to growth after two years on profitability

Ernest Garcia · Carvana CEO & Co-Founder, Ernest Garcia: Building a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Apr 7, 2025 · at 1:05:00

Ernest Garcia is the co-founder and CEO of online used car retailer Carvana. He discloses Carvana's strategic pivot from exclusive focus on profitability to balancing growth and infrastructure.

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“We as a company, not to like dive too deeply into the specifics of us, but I think we faced a two year period where we focused on nothing but profitability. And I think that we've, you know, more recently been trying to find the right balance between profitability growth and continuing to build a machine that is even more differentiated than the machine that we had before. And I think that we're at a place where it makes sense for us to be shifting some of our finite focus toward growth and toward foundation laying.”

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