Blinker
What they do: Blinker has built a mobile app that “allows anyone to buy, sell and finance cars themselves with the snap of a photo.”
Problem they solve: This one’s simple and straightforward: who on earth wants to spend time in a car dealership? A used car lot – or what those in the industry often refer to as a “sled lot”? Forget about it. Most people would rather visit the dentist. The term “used car salesman” is synonymous with “buyer beware,” so any shortcut that helps consumers avoid the discomfort of that buying process merits attention.
But that’s just the buying experience.
What about financing?
According to Blinker, “40 million people will buy or sell a car this year. And 70% will go to the dealership to do it, losing thousands of dollars in the process. Why? Because the dealership controls their loans.”
The traditional buying and financing process – end to end – is “controlled by middlemen like dealers or banks who get more value out of each transaction, than consumers do.”
#Big50-2017 #startup Blinker lets consumers buy, sell, verify, and finance cars through a mobile app. Click To TweetOf course, many people try to handle private sales themselves, through Craigslist, CarsDirect, or similar sites. But the 30% of consumers who tackle the complicated process themselves receive little or no verification that the buyers, sellers, or cars are who or what they claim to be.
How they solve it: The Blinker mobile app allows anyone to buy, sell, finance and refinance cars themselves without going to the bank or dealership. Blinker uses patented image-recognition technology to “make everything as easy as snapping a photo.”
By using technology to remove dealerships and banks, Blinker “puts people in control – doing for used car sales what Airbnb and Uber did for vacation stays and taxi rides.” By cutting out middlemen, the app helps people earn or save thousands per transaction, on average.
Blinker’s technology fully verifies each seller and automobile “with the snap of a photo to save consumers time, money, and headaches” that have traditionally gone hand in hand with buying, selling, or financing a car – either through a traditional dealer or using a private-party platform.
Blinker also services every loan financed through the app.
To help consumers avoid private marketplace rip-offs, Blinker verifies ownership records and seller identities, handles payments through the app, conducts a 17-point fraud check, integrates Black Book pricing guidance, ensures the seller receives payment securely and transfers the title electronically, and offers a free CARFAX report with every listing.
Headquarters: Denver, CO
CEO: Rod Buscher, previously co-founded the John Elway Dealerships and Summit Automotive Group.
Year Founded: 2013
Funding: The startup is backed by an undisclosed amount of Series A and B funding.
Competitors include: Blinker competes against a range of other companies. They line up against both traditional car dealers and newer online ones (CarsDirect, CarSaver). They also compete against private-party platforms like Craigslist and eBay. Lending competitors include LendingClub and AutoGravity, but Blinker sees its most direct competition coming from the likes of Carvana, Shift, InstaMotor, and Vroom.
Customers include: Since this isn’t a B2B play, we’re not going to list customers, but Blinker has a review page on its website.
Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: Despite the lack of publicly disclosed funding, the Startup50 team is bullish on this app. Buying and selling cars is a major hassle. Pricing is opaque, selections vary wildly, and knowing the true history of a used car is a crapshoot.
Previous innovators such as CARFAX and AutoCheck arm consumers with more information to help negotiate with dealers, but consumers are still at a massive disadvantage, especially when it comes to financing.
In the Big50-2017 competition, Blinker did very well in online voting, and their response to the content challenge was a good one. Maybe I’ll even give Blinker a try when it comes time to sell my ’69 Pontiac Catalina when I get the old beast up and running again. . .
