Good Neighbor Podcast: Orange County

How A Tech PM Built A Vertically Integrated Turo Fleet With Investor Backing

• Rachel Fyffe & Adrian Sun

Share episode

What if the best car rental experience isn’t a rental at all? We sit down with Adrian Sun, the founder of Crownstone Incorporated, to unpack how a single Turo trip snowballed into a vertically integrated car sharing company that acquires, reconditions, operates, and ultimately sells vehicles for profit. Along the way, he challenges the biggest myth in peer-to-peer mobility—that quality lags behind traditional agencies—and shows how disciplined systems, precise tracking, and a hospitality mindset can deliver smoother trips and stronger ratings.

Adrian takes us inside the business engine: sourcing the right vehicles, building a maintenance plan that extends lifespan, and crafting guest onboarding that removes friction before it appears. From signature listing photos to crystal-clear pickup instructions, every touchpoint is designed to increase trust, reduce cancellations, and lift utilization. We also explore the investment side. Instead of real estate, he offers an alternative: returns generated by vehicle operations over a roughly five-year lifecycle, with careful attention to risk, seasonality, and exit timing. Compliance limits broad advertising, so he relies on relationships and transparent conversations to ensure alignment.

There’s a personal story under the hood. After a decade in product management at top consulting and tech firms, a layoff forced a choice. Adrian doubled down on the side project he’d been refining and watched the fleet grow fivefold in a year. The lesson is sharp and hopeful: constraints create clarity, and with the right playbook, a setback can become an on-ramp to something better. If you’re curious about Turo hosting, investor-backed car sharing, or simply how to run an operationally tight service business, this conversation delivers practical details you can use.

Email Adrian Sun: adrian.sun@gmail.com

If you enjoyed the episode, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves smart business breakdowns, and leave a quick review to help others discover the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Rachel Five.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Now, if you're looking for a new and different approach to the car rental, to renting a car, I have just the resource for you. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Adrian's son, with Crownstone Incorporated. Adrian, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me on. This is uh such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we are really excited to learn about your business. You sound like a really entrepreneurial young man. So tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so my business um primarily focuses on um car sharing. And that's uh technically legally different thing than car rentals, but um we uh own and operate um Agriens All Rental LLC, which then takes their assets and generates the cash flow from investors that can invest in our company. And so those these two lanes of our business allows us to basically get take the fuel from investors, we promise um and we invest that into an auto rental business where we operate it in a vertically integrated sort of manner. So we acquire vehicles, we can recon recondition them and we operate them, and then we then sell them and um uh take our profits from that. And so the general investment lifecycle is probably around five years, and we um have have since grown about five times in the last year.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Well, how did you get into this type of business?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was a little bit of a mistake. Uh like I um first rented um uh a car on Tura, which is the ride sharing platform that we use. There are other ones out there, but we chose to centralize onto one of them just for ease of operation. And as a user, I thought about the math behind it and thought that it was gonna be profitable. And then a couple years later, I just decided to just try it out for a little bit. And then um I was doing product work at uh one of the big four consulting companies at the time. And then um when I had changed jobs between back to smaller tech companies, I just continued to grow the fleet a little bit. And then um I then I developed the idea around the ability to accelerate this by creating essentially a financial um method for people to basically diversify their portfolio. So um instead of say investing in real estate, um, you can invest in the returns from generated from uh vehicles.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. Interesting. Well, I mean, what do you think are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, um, I think one big misconception about um car rentals in general is for on peer-to-peer platforms, is um that the quality is going to be lower. And there are some amount of people on the platform that maybe don't take it seriously or just um they might have not have the right mindset. But overall, um a car can be repaired um and uh maintained for a very long period of time, a lot longer than what most people think. And so a lot of it comes down to the tracking, um, the operational efficiency, and also um just your attitude towards making sure that you're trying to give your guests the best trip possible.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Now we know marketing is at the heart of every business. So how are you attracting your customers and even potential investors?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so with investors, um, I guess marketing is a little bit tricky because there's all sorts of regulations around that. So um it's been that that's been something where I've just been going through basically networking. And um, with the vehicles um on the our car sharing platform, we basically have a signature um with our photos that we put on there and how we introduce the information as to how you pick up the car. All that is unique to our own business. We basically send a customer a link, which then has a very detailed description of all the steps that need to be taken. There's photos, things like that. Within the platform that I use to do car sharing, you can't really share photos within um the application automatically. And so finding the car might be difficult. And so I spent a lot of time focusing on making it very easy for the customer to pick up the car, to drop it off, and to know what to expect all the way through the process.

SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. Now, have you ever thought about doing your own podcast?

SPEAKER_02:

I have, um, but I felt like a YouTube video might a YouTube channel might be a little more fitting for the stuff that I do because I'm involved with everything, like selecting vehicles, um, I'm involved with diagnosing issues with the cars, I'm involved with just um a wide variety of things. And I think that what I uh what I see is actually kind of interesting. I think as a uh from starting a podcast, um I haven't really thought about that one. I I know it's uh I I think it'd be very interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right on. Now, outside of work, Adrian, what do you like to do for fun?

SPEAKER_02:

I really like going backpacking, um, weight lifting, and one of my main hobbies is photography. And so um it kind of all goes hand in hand with with itself because when you're backpacking, you see some very beautiful things that um you can only really capture with the right equipment, the skill set, timing, all those different things. Same with traveling, you know, in a different country. And so I'm one of the rare people that still owns a separate camera than the one on her phone. And I think that with the right um, I guess, attitude to towards it, you can capture some uh very specific feelings that um that the iPhone or can't um the phone can't really capture.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right on. So, Adrian, please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about Adrian's son with Crown Stone Incorporated.

SPEAKER_02:

I would say if there is ever a change in direction with your career, whether it's chosen or unchosen, um sudden changes or or roads that may seem to end may lead to something far, far greater. And I say this because I was in a decade-long uh career with product management, tech, and um, you know, it the pay was was good and it was challenging, gave me a lot of skills. But now that I'm running my own thing, it was only started because I was let go. And when I was like go, I had this going as a side project, and this really forced me to think about what I really wanted to do and the satisfaction you get from starting your own thing. And I would say there's nothing like it. And I highly recommend everyone to look at any adversity as an opportunity instead of um feeling the negativity inside of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right. Yes. Now, how can our listeners learn more about Crown Stoning and your car rental aspect?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you can um find me on the Toro platform, Adrian Sun's my, you can look me up as a host, but if you want to learn more about the investment side, um, you can reach out to me on my email, which is adrian.sun at gmail.com. So um right now with the funding side, um, it's I'm taking a select few like um investors, but um I'm with a Turo, that's um you can find me on there, and you can see all my cars listed on there.

SPEAKER_01:

Good. Well, Adrian, I really appreciate you being on the show, and we wish you and your business really all the best moving forward.

SPEAKER_02:

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

unknown:

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnporangecounty.com. That's gnpoangecounty.com or call 714 941 2862.