Moments of impact from Dhaval Shah's career
At Copart, a salvage auction business, customers routinely bought vehicles, dismantled them, and resold parts on eBay or Amazon — leaving Copart with no stake in a revenue stream it was naturally positioned to own. I self-identified this gap as a completely new business opportunity and built the case from scratch: conducting market research, authoring a pitch deck, a 3-year plan, and an operational plan, then pitching directly to the C-suite. My proposal secured executive approval, dedicated resources, and seed funding to build a two-sided auto-parts marketplace from the ground up. I owned the product end-to-end, assembling and leading a cross-functional team of 8 engineers and 2 operations analysts. Since no PRD existed for this kind of two-sided marketplace at Copart, I personally defined the MVP scope — prioritizing the top 5 part categories — negotiated data-sharing agreements with 3 inventory providers, and designed the seller onboarding workflow myself. This 0-to-1 build scaled to 256K SKUs onboarded and 8 large sellers signed, all validated in UAT against a projected $5-6M revenue plan. With the marketplace currently in UAT, I've set a Q3 launch target, beginning with the first 3 sellers going live commercially. This phased rollout is projected to generate approximately $500K in revenue within the first 6 months, scaling to the full $5-6M plan within 18 months as we expand into additional part categories. This initiative represents a new revenue channel built entirely from an idea I identified, pitched, funded, and executed end-to-end.
