I couldn't afford to buy rental properties at 25. So I started renting out cars instead.

Saimah Chaudhry started her business by renting her Smartcar Courtesy of Saimah Chaudhry Saimah Chaudhry listed her Smartcar on a rental service on a whim.

She grew her fleet to more than 50 vehicles and was making hundreds of thousands annually.

Five years ago, she launched a rental platform focused on electric vehicles.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Saimah Chaudhry , cofounder and chief operating officer of Zevo .

It has been edited for length and clarity.

Back in 2015, I was working for a SaaS company that I'd founded.

It mostly served clients in the restaurant industry, where my parents and grandparents were both entrepreneurs.

One day, I was meeting with an out-of-town client who was staying in Manhattan Beach.

He mentioned he'd rented the BMW he was driving from Relay Ride (which later became the car rental app Turo).

That was the first time I heard of car sharing.

I was working from home, and my Smartcar was definitely an underutilized asset.

On a whim, I listed it for rent.

A grad student at UCLA booked it for three months, and I pretty much never saw that car again — after that, it was always rented.

I quickly got 2 more cars to rent My day-to-day car use was pretty minimal, but I still needed to drive occasionally.