Miro Lu kicks off our debut episode with Aaron Tan, Co-Founder & CEO of Carro.
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Aaron Tan is reinventing how cars are bought, financed, insured, and serviced. He started his first company at 13, studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon, and in this conversation unpacks why he bet on used cars, why tariffs make spare parts a once-in-a-decade opportunity, and his counterintuitive philosophy of encouraging people to “come and go” while scaling across the region.
What You’ll Hear About:
How a curious teen tearing down his first PC became the operator behind Southeast Asia’s leading auto-tech platform.
The U.S. years that shaped Aaron’s interdisciplinary, hands-on, global lens.
Why used-car buying should be predictable, fair, and trustworthy and how Carro is built for that.
Going public: what it really takes, and when “never say never” to the U.S. makes sense.
AI and agentic automation inside Carro: practical use cases that compound execution.
Grind vs. dedication: his unvarnished take on doing the hard things when it counts.
Leadership longevity: why he doesn’t imagine running Carro forever, and what might come next.
In This Episode:
00:00 - Introducing Aaron Tan
01:17 - Fast Focus - Rapid fire insights from Aaron Tan
01:59 - How it began - “I started his first company when I was thirteen.”
04:41 - “I think for lack of a better word, before I was 21…I think the word obnoxious is probably true.”
07:37 - The Carnegie Mellon days
08:50 - Campus entrepreneur: Building a company with a professor
13:35 - Building Singapore’s startup ecosystem and naming Block 71
20:22 - Why he chose cars over real estate
27:37 - Lessons from scaling across Asia
27:54 - Hiring Right: The people you need on the team
30:15 - Geopolitics: His take
30:30 - “I generally believe that businessmen and politicians should stay away from each other.”
31:41 - Tariffs & Opportunity: A good time to be in the spare parts business
32:20 - “Never Say Never” to heading to the U.S.
33:03 - What it takes to go public
34:46 - AI and agentic automation inside Carro
39:00 - People and Culture
40:19 - Talent Mobility: “Always encourage people to come and go”
43:13 - “When push comes to shove, when you have projects that need you to sleep in the office, you jolly well do that...because this is simply put being dedicated and being motivated to do your job.”
44:44 - Giving back and investing in others
49:32 - The people in his corner
52:18 - Lessons from the journey
56:45 - “I don’t imagine myself running Carro for the rest of my life.”
*This episode was recorded on 18 September 2025
More About Aaron Tan & Carro:
References:
Zeekr
Chinese Phrases
三岁看到老 (sān sùi kàn dào lǎo)
At three, you can see the old.
Meaning: A person’s character or tendencies show very early; early habits foreshadow who they’ll become.
鹬蚌相争 (yù bàng xiāng zhēng)
A fight between a snipe and a clam.
Meaning: Two sides locked in conflict hurt each other, letting a third party reap the benefit.
996 (jiǔ jiǔ liù)
Meaning: Chinese work-schedule slang: 9 a.m.–9 p.m., 6 days a week, common in some tech/startup firms.
卷 (juǎn)
Meaning: “to over-compete / overwork” in a zero-sum, pressure-cooker way; everyone piles on effort for diminishing returns.
