Diagnosing Your Car

Name: Carvoyant

Founders/owners: Bret Tobey, CEO, Matt Galvin, CTO, Renz Kuipers, CFO

When founded: August 2011

Who's invested: Angels, Stage 1 Ventures, SK Ventures

Sales: Not disclosed

Sales Projected for 2013: More than $1 million

Fun Fact: Half the team rides bikes to work.

One of the more frustrating moments for car owners occurs when the check-engine light comes on, signaling a need for maintenance. But what exactly is wrong with the car, and what will it cost to fix the problem?

That's the issue that inspired Bret Tobey, CEO of Tampa-based Carvoyant, to found his year-old company with partners Renz Kuipers, CFO, and Matt Galvin, chief technology officer. They have developed a device that can be inserted under the dashboard in a car's diagnostic port, to deliver ongoing information about the car's performance, anticipate routine required servicing, and alert a designated repair shop or the driver when a problem arises.

The driver can control how the data is used, says Tobey. It can be scanned to a dealership or independent shop, or made available to the motorist, who can then decide where to take the car. Carvoyant captures the car's past maintenance history and current performance data, and acts as a neutral third party in automotive servicing.

“A lot of times, people feel ripped off,” says Tobey. “If we can provide more information and make the repair shop more aware — whether it's a dealer or an independent shop — that the driver has more information, there's less opportunity for somebody to try to pull the wool over [a car owner's] eyes.”

In January, Carvoyant plans to launch a program with two Tampa-area car dealers, a BMW and a Toyota dealership, to begin distributing the devices to their customers, says Kuipers, who is based in Los Angeles, but travels to Tampa. He spoke at the Tampa headquarters, a modest building where a pool table, keyboard, drum set and exercise bike, items belonging to the landlord, share space with the Carvoyant cubicles.

The intent is that the dealers and repair shops Carvoyant signs up for a monthly fee of $6 or $8 apiece, will in turn persuade their customers to install the monitors. The basic Bluetooth monitor device costs $30.

In January, the company will begin offering car owners direct access to their data. The direct-to-consumer platform aims to provide consumers with access to the system that is not tied to the car dealer, Kuipers says.

Eventually the company also plans to offer aggregated data to application developers. This could provide valuable information on consumer behaviors, car maintenance trends and other data the automotive industry might find useful.

Carvoyant has 400 beta users of its platform, says Kuipers. After the dealership and consumer programs launch, the founders hope more dealers will invest in the program. “There are 17,000 car dealerships around the country, and each of them has a database. So, there's big numbers if this all proves out,” says Kuipers.

But the challenge lies in persuading the dealers and independent shops to participate. “The biggest hurdle is, they're not necessarily the early adopters of new technology, so they need evidence that this works,” adds Kuipers. The founders provided the two early Tampa dealers with special pricing as an incentive, as they develop their early database.

“Then all of a sudden we have a whole queue of dealers in Tampa and a queue of dealers in Los Angeles waiting to see these metrics,” Kuipers says. “So what this means is, this puts us on the sales map.”