Serial entrepreneur Todd Smith has broad experience in the automotive industry. He has sold cars, been a Chevy dealer, sold and managed alive chat platform for car dealers, and more. Over the last few years, he heard frequent complaints about auto dealerships being stuck with clunky,desktop-computer-based CRMs that weren\u2019t properly linked to the mobile devices sales people and customers use for most of their everyday communication.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018I can build a better platform.’ The idea is that we can build technology to turn a salesperson into a super salesperson.\u201d Smith said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, he started 360Converge to offer a mobile-centric tool that streamlines and consolidates everything from texts and emails to inventory, and that helps sales staff identify and prioritize engaged shoppers to get matched up with the vehicle they need, fast.<\/p>\n

Tyler Letson also saw an opportunity to help dealers increase profits while improving the car-buying experience for customers. His company,ALFi Solutions, aims to leverage technology to optimize financing options for vehicle sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe automotive industry as a whole is largely antiquated in its technology and processes and still uses human judgment and discretion in many of its lending practices,\u201d Letson said. \u201cI realized an opportunity to standardize this process and drive profitability by optimizing deal structure and lender selection.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Churchill at Carnooba, the idea for an app for local businesses offering automotive services came when he went looking for someone to detail a car he wanted to sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the detailers in my area, even the ones whose services were up to $500, had websites that looked like they were from the 1990s, with unreliable transparency,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a nightmare.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All three of these companies found vital support for their launch at StarterStudio. ALFi Solutions participated in StarterStudio\u2019s Ideation-Stage Accelerator, designed to help startup founders go \u201cfrom cocktail-napkin idea to a viable business model\u201d in nine weeks.<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe program facilitators and other founders acted as a sounding board and offered advice and expertise as I fleshed out my idea,\u201d Letson said.\u201cStarterStudio\u2019s accelerator also provided structure and accountability each week as I juggle my full-time job and startup simultaneously.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

360Converge and Carnooba went through the Seed-Stage Accelerator, a six-month, part-time, mentor-led program to foster early growth and get new tech companies ready for investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarterStudio was super effective at explaining the process and guiding the exploration of problems in the world \u2013 how to talk to people, ask the right questions, learn from the answers,\u201d Churchill said. \u201cThere are people willing to help and offer advice. And that value, when our team is small and young and moving fast, is the difference between success in the next phase and failure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Smith said StarterStudio\u2019s Seed-Stage Accelerator gave his company the traction it needed to climb to the next level. He said tech companies like his often head to Silicon Valley or New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarterStudio has been very helpful for me to see things from a different perspective, a different angle, with the guidance of the mentors,\u201d he said. \u201cTapping into that was the most important thing.\u00a0But I really wanted to build a tech business here in Central Florida. Orlando is a great city. It has the University of Central Florida, and lots of great talent. Lots of times that talent flees because there aren\u2019t a lot of big technology companies here. We wanted to become one of those companies, and StarterStudio is helping us make it happen.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Automakers are engaged in a high-tech race to develop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starterstudio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}