Rod Buscher knows car sales.
The industry veteran has a decades-long history in the brick and mortar automotive sales industry, founding the John Elway Dealerships with the Broncos legend in 1989 and launching the Groove dealership family in 2007.
Years later, Buscher is still focused on selling cars, albeit in an entirely different marketplace.
He founded Blinker in 2013 after seeing the headaches customers experienced during the private car-buying process. He wanted to bring the traditional dealership experience to private sales.
Blinker launched its mobile car transaction platform in late 2016 and has slowly built out its offerings since then.
"A startup is not for the faint of heart," Buscher said, adding that he's leaned on an experienced team of software and lending professionals to grow the company.
Blinker announced this week that it has received a $10 million investment led by Thornapple River Capital, an alternative asset management firm specializing in private company investments.
Thornapple launched in 2015 and manages nine private funds, investing in industries including community banks, healthcare, technology, real estate and state-legalized marijuana companies.
The funding round will allow Blinker to bring on industry partners that Buscher said will allow the company to expand nationally.
Blinker has developed a patented transactional platform that supports sellers, buyers and borrowers in the automotive market.
The platform uses AI and image recognition technology, allowing users to snap a photo of their car or enter their plate number, and Blinker will instantly pull up every detail about it, including estimated value, so they can post it for sale.
The company doesn't take a cut of the sale, instead making its money by offering financing options to the vehicle's purchaser. On the buyer side, Blinker securely transfers funds electronically from the buyer to the seller.
Since launching, the company has assisted with over 10,000 transactions, with approximately 10 percent of those occurring via the mobile app.
Blinker currently has 30 employees, a number that has fluctuated in recent months, including an approximately 20 employee layoff in March, as reported by BusinessDen.
Buscher didn't offer specifics when it came to hiring following this round, but said upcoming national partnerships will create more positions at the startup.
"The opportunity size with the national partners is significantly larger than what we could have done organically," he said.
The service is currently available in Colorado, Texas, California and Florida. CMO Andrew Price said that Blinker plans to expand its service offerings in more states in the fourth quarter of 2019 and into 2020.
Buscher admitted that his foray into the startup ecosystem has been a challenge, but he's happy with what the company has built in Denver.
"It took longer than I expected, but I’m really happy with the product and the end result," he said. "A lot of these things get built on both coasts, but not a lot of them get built here in Denver."
