A downtown Kansas City-headquartered startup’s first major institutional investment is expected to enable the company to scale operations, advance its product roadmap, and meet increasing market demand, its co-founders said Tuesday.
Danny Zaslavsky and Chris Hoke, VINCUE
VINCUE — an end-to-end inventory lifecycle solution for retail automotive dealerships and one of Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2022 — announced the completion of its Series B investment round led by Holman, a global automotive services organization and customer of VINCUE. The round also included significant investments from Autotech Ventures and Automotive Ventures, a pair of venture capital firms with portfolios spanning automotive, transportation, and technology.
Financial details of the round were not disclosed.
VINCUE currently boasts 65 employees, based out of its Broadway Avenue offices.
“We have a team here in Kansas City that truly believes in our vision, our mission, and most importantly the success of the entire dealer body,” said Chris Hoke, Founder, chief executive officer and chief technology officer at VINCUE. “To have these institutions, true industry leaders, share our vision and put their belief in us is humbling.”
RELATED: VINCUE steers locally owned auto dealers into battle against national chains
Noteworthy previous investors in the company include Matt Watson (VinSolutions), Cypress Capital, locals Bob Green (Backlot Cars) and John Mitchell.
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Elevator pitch: VINCUE is transforming the retail automotive software industry by providing dealers with new, innovative end-to-end inventory lifecycle management and market pricing solutions. This gives dealers access to real-time data and tools in a single system to stock smarter, increase turn, compete effectively, and above all else — maximize profits.
[/pullquote]Lead investor Holman delivers a unique range of automotive-centric services and operates one of the largest privately owned dealership groups in the United States with more than 30 franchise dealerships across eight states from coast-to-coast, VINCUE said in a press release.
“Holman is a remarkable organization with an unsurpassed collection of automotive competencies and is held in extremely high regard across the entire industry. We’re thrilled Holman believes in the significant potential of our technology and is at the forefront of this investment in our company,” said Hoke. “Holman is an innovator in our industry and the organization’s forward-thinking mindset along with its strategic capital investment will help to fuel our company’s continued growth.”
Collaboration between VINCUE and Homan started as a simple customer/vendor relationship, said Danny Zaslavsky, co-founder and managing partner at VINCUE, but both companies realized there were a number of natural synergies.
“As Holman piloted our platform in several of their dealership locations, it quickly became apparent that our technology would help them further optimize operations while also enhancing our own capabilities,” said Zaslavsky. “We’re proud that Holman shares our vision for the future of automotive retailing and we’re honored they’ve invested in our innovative inventory management solution.”
Through its unified platform, VINCUE offers a comprehensive suite of solutions and capabilities to manage every step of the inventory lifecycle including buying plans, multi-channel acquisition sourcing, market pricing and appraisal, merchandising and syndication, and digital marketing, the company said in a press release.
The platform’s goal: help dealers unlock prevailing strategies that increase gross and turn through providing real-time market and competitor data to make better buying and merchandising decisions — and outperform the market.
“The mission of our growth ventures team is to align with early-stage businesses who are driving innovation in the industry and complement Holman’s collective automotive competencies. VINCUE certainly fits that profile and we’re excited to invest in their next phase of growth,” said Bill Cariss, president and CEO, growth ventures, Holman. “The VINCUE team is extremely talented and continues to think differently about inventory lifecycle management. Their intuitive platform is poised to disrupt the status quo of the retail automotive sector and offers dealerships a solution that empowers insightful decision making.”
Danny Zaslavsky, VINCUE, speaks alongside Holman executives at a recent Holman Emerge event; photo courtesy of VINCUE
As part of its investment in VINCUE, Holman is also poised to integrate the technology at additional locations across its family of dealerships.
By leveraging VINCUE’s platform, Holman is able to further enhance its market intelligence to introduce new operational processes and procedures that it hopes will set the standard for the future of automotive retailing, the company said.
“Through our initial use of VINCUE’s technology, we believe it provides the data intelligence and tools necessary to make impactful decisions, measure success, and ultimately, outperform the rest of the market in real-time,” said Chris Morgan, vice president, retail operations, Holman.
VINCUE’s top priorities are now growing its performance management and development teams, and investing in operational improvements that will allow them to get more done, faster, said Hoke.
“We have the benefit now of dealerships seeking us out in the industry, wanting to understand how we can help them win,” he said, “so right now it’s about how we scale, grow, and meet their expectations.”
