Built on the floor. Available for the right acquirer.
An AI-native dealership intelligence platform — 24 modules live on real data, 71 in full production catalog, 18+ months in continuous production, 1,167+ deals through AI routing. Built by a 30-year operator for the ~58,000 US dealers who are still paying legacy prices for legacy software.
LouieAuto is positioned for a single strategic tuck-in — not a roll-up or independent commercial launch. The right acquirer already has distribution; they need the product.
Security & Compliance
FTC Safeguards Rule compliant at the control level. SOC 2 Type II in progress — targeted Q3 2026. Full control matrix and readiness roadmap available under NDA.
Data sovereignty: Dealer outcome data stored on-premises in isolated SQLite — zero shared cloud DB, zero public-model training. Anthropic API configured with data-retention: none. Full JSONL portability on request. One-page DPA available. CDK and Reynolds do not offer equivalent dealer-favorable data agreements — this is a structural acquirer advantage in enterprise sales.
CDK, Reynolds, Tekion, Dealertrack. Louie overlays on your platform and adds AI intelligence without triggering a swap — 30 days to first value.
CRM & F&I Vendors
VinSolutions, DriveCentric, ProMax. Add the AI layer that dealers are asking for without building it from scratch.
PE / Strategic Roll-Ups
Automotive retail groups or vertical SaaS portfolios looking for a production-proven AI layer to deploy across existing book.
OEM Digital Platforms
Manufacturer-sponsored dealer tech stacks that need a DMS-agnostic intelligence layer across franchise networks.
Valuation framework
This product represents the equivalent of a design-partner deployment with a four-quarter operating history — 18 months of floor refinement, 1,167+ AI-routed deals, and a documented before/after across all five rooftops. The multiples below follow from that reality, not from projected growth.
$3.5M+ rebuild floor · $4M–$10M strategic range
Value anchors to 18 months of operator-calibrated AI deployment — not trailing ARR. Post first external customer, ARR multiple brackets below apply. Strategic acquirer with existing dealer distribution justifies the upper end at close.
Financial Buyer (PE / Roll-Up)
$3M–$8M + earnout
Replacement cost + IP premium · deploy-rate earnout as attach scales · cash at close · 90-day transition
Strategic (CRM / DMS / OEM)
$6M–$15M at close
Distribution synergy premium · competitive threat framing · full IP transfer · attach-rate earnout
Operator / Group
Structured
Seller note + revenue share available · Negotiable
What moves you between brackets: Every named external dealer paying full price adds ~2× its ARR contribution in valuation lift — it proves the thesis isn't founder-specific. Brain Command and Stip Checker (AI fraud detection that catches income mismatches before funding) are two features a CFO underwrites separately. Zero churn to date is a legitimate data point and rare for a pre-commercial asset.
Nearest public comp Quorum → Valsoft · $43M USD · Dec 2025 · ~2.1× revenue · Canadian multi-rooftop dealer management SaaS. Sets the floor for pre-commercial dealer ops exits. LouieAuto's moat depth (18-month AI routing calibration dataset, 42-lender matrix, Bankruptcy Data Center pipeline, operator-encoded knowledge base) is structurally absent from a general-purpose DMS — supporting the vertical-AI premium over that floor.
Full comp set →
Preferred: cash at close · all-IP transfer · 90-day transition
Asking price
Price on application (POA)
Disclosed under NDA after gate submission. Range consistent with valuation framework above.
Current ARR and financial history available to verified acquirers under NDA. Request materials →
Legacy DMS bolt-on — what the real numbers show
Inputs anchored to the live deployment: +$312/unit documented PVR uplift across 1,167 AI-routed deals · $150K–$274K/yr dealer gross range across 5 production rooftops · 18 months of data. Pick a platform and adjust attach rate.
Attach rate — % of install base10%
1% conservative25% aggressive
Real inputs: Dealer gross uplift uses $250K/rooftop/yr midpoint — conservative planning figure within the $180K–$274K documented range — from the 5-store live deployment ($150K documented floor · $274K ceiling at 80% attribution — methodology at /case-study). Subscription ARR uses $597/mo list price. Churn defense = 2% reduction in annual DMS churn on the deployed cohort at the platform's avg contract value. All projections are model outputs at stated attach rate — not contracted revenue. Current deployment: early commercial · pre-scale. Actual financials available under NDA. Request materials →
What you're buying.
Five asset categories. Every one is transfer-ready on close.
Codebase & Architecture
24 modules live on real data · 71 in full catalog, 18+ months of floor refinement. Node.js + Claude AI. DMS-agnostic. Deployable on any cloud or on-prem environment in under 48 hours.
Technical diligence note: PostgreSQL 16 is live — 239-table schema applied and verified. The unified DB helper layer routes all reads/writes to Postgres when enabled; SQLite remains active for current single-group scale. Full cutover targets Q3 2026 and is unblocked. Schema map and migration plan in the data room.
Not vaporware — the public changelog documents every meaningful release back to Spring 2025: 15 new routes on April 28, Voice BDC live, Bankruptcy Data Center integration, the 10-API intelligence moat, COX competitive gap routes. Weekly shipping cadence, 18+ months of continuous deployment.
Proprietary Data & Knowledge
42-lender rate matrix built from 30 years of operator relationships. Bankruptcy Data Center pipeline. 1,167+ deals routed through AI. Operator-coded prompts that took 18 months to refine.
Brand & Infrastructure
louieauto.com domain. Production VPS with nginx, pm2, automated backups. Anthropic API integration. Resend transactional email. Plausible analytics. All credentials transfer.
Ambient Floor AI (Louie Live)
Voice-first earpiece advisor that runs live on the floor — tap to ask Louie a question mid-deal, or leave it in Passive mode to catch buyer signals. Four modes: Active (tap-to-ask), Passive (keyword detection), Lot Walk (walkaround prompts), and Brief (pre-shift intelligence). Shipped May 2026. Built on Web Speech API + ElevenLabs TTS.
Build-vs-buy note: Replicating this feature end-to-end — voice capture, dealer context injection, AI routing, TTS pipeline, and mobile PWA — is roughly 6 months of senior engineering time. Try the live demo →
Operator Transition
90-day structured onboarding. Weeks 1–4: live shadowing every active deal workflow. Weeks 5–12: parallel desk coverage while your team ramps. Post-close consulting at $350/hr (20 hrs/mo standard; 40+ hrs/mo available for enterprise integration). The 3,059-row operator knowledge base, full lender matrix documentation, and prompt engineering notes are transfer-ready at close — the floor knowledge is encoded in the system, not just in the founder's head. A 12-week formal knowledge transfer plan is available in the data room. Multi-year advisory engagement available for strategic acquirers requiring deep integration support.
Thirty years of Saturdays taught one thing — there's no shortage of dealers who need this. The question for an acquirer isn't whether the market exists. It's how fast you can put distribution behind a product that already works.
NIADA industry estimate, widely cited in trade press. Not individually confirmed.
Pricing tiers
Lot Starter — $597/mo Pro Dealer — $1,197/mo Power Dealer — $1,997/mo Dealer Group — $3,997/mo
Platform install base — where the dealers already are
Bolt-on model: illustrative $499/mo add-on fee — invisible on a bill that already runs $3K–$8K/mo. No rip-and-replace required. Actual acquirer resale pricing is negotiable post-acquisition.
Platform
Type
Dealers
5% attach ARR
10% attach ARR
Sourcing
CDK Global
DMS
~15,000
$4.5M
$9M
2024 cyberattack coverage ✓
VinSolutions
CRM
~9,500
$2.8M
$5.7M
Cox $1B+ rev + press est.
Reynolds & Reynolds
DMS
~7,500
$2.2M
$4.5M
Industry analyst est. (pvt)
DealerSocket
CRM + DMS
~9,000
$2.7M
$5.4M
Pre-Solera press materials
Tekion
DMS (cloud)
3,000+ 53% YoY ↑
$900K
$1.8M
tekion.com homepage ✓
Other (DriveCentric, ProMax…)
CRM/desk
~5,000
$1.5M
$3M
Estimate (pvt companies)
Combined (49,000 platform-tracked) Franchise dealers on named DMS/CRM platforms above · total industry ~58K rooftops — see /facts
49,000
$14.7M ARR
$29.3M ARR
Sourcing key: ✓ = primary source verified. "Est." = industry analyst or press estimate, not individually confirmed from company. All ARR figures are model outputs at stated attach rates — not contracted revenue. DMS and CRM counts overlap; a dealer may appear in both CDK and VinSolutions figures. Comparable exits: VinSolutions (Cox Automotive, 4–6× ARR) · DealerSocket ($1.4B, ~5× ARR at sale) — legacy SaaS comps. Vertical AI ops platforms with documented fraud-detection ROI trade at 15–25× ARR in 2025–2026 markets. At $29.3M ARR (10% attach) and a 15× multiple → $440M enterprise value. Distribution is the unlock.
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