Seems to me like now is a good time to raise some money around this particular issue.

they did - see Tesla

How much of a disruption was that? Teslas still can't be sold everywhere (such as anywhere in Michigan)...

I personally can't immediately envision what the disruption would look like. Do you have any notions? Tekion is one of the newer DMSes to be built with modern architecture and be cloud-native versus the retrofit of all the other DMSes (which were retrofits of other types of solutions before they were automotive). I would love to see something be the Uber or Airbnb for Deal Management.

What would the value add or differentiator be? If you try to go with cheaper, the incumbents will take note and adjust their prices accordingly (it's software, prices are much more flexible than physical stuff).

Close to this market - ShopMonkey is doing it for general garage work, and we, GlobalWorkshop, are doing it for high end/custom vehicles (restoration/restomods/small motorsport teams).

I'm pretty sure one of our recent trialling companies have been using CDK and desperate to get away from it for their restoration work.

"It hasn't been updated in years" was the quote last week..

It's complicated. The amount of industry knowledge needed is huge - not something someone with good software expertise can just leave on the fly.

It's also been, traditionally, a crazy business with dozens and dozens of vendors that a dealership can choose from. CDK and Reynolds might have pretty big market share, but a lot of that is because they integrate with zillions of tiny vendors.

Lastly, I just don't think there's been enough money in it to try. The industry as a whole is lucrative but you're not gonna get rich trying to dominate a single aspect of it. COVID represented a permanent shift in how software was viewed in the industry. Dealerships have to spend more on higher quality software, because they simply can't afford to stay in business without it.

The closest company I can think of that's trying to disrupt this is Tekion.