DealerDoc: raised £326,000 within 12 months.

Richard and Gareth noticed car dealerships were missing opportunities to incentivise sales teams. Richard solved this with a combination of spreadsheets, but Gareth saw this could work for others as a SaaS solution. Within a year of meeting DQ, they had a working prototype and £326K of funding.

What was the challenge?

When we met, Richard and Gareth had received several quotations from software developers, and were considering having their idea coded by professionals. There were two main problems:

Firstly, the quotes ranged wildly from £40,000 to almost £100,000. Secondly, although Gareth had worked for a software vendor for many years, neither he nor Richard had designed and developed their own product before. They had a strong gut feeling that their solution would sell, but they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and they knew they couldn’t afford to get this wrong.

What did we do?

One of the things we loved about DealerDoc was that Richard had already created an MVP in the form of his spreadsheets. These were already in use at two different car dealerships.

Although not as user-friendly as software, these spreadsheets demonstrated the value of the product and the fact that there was appetite outside Richard’s immediate network. Our job was to build on Richard’s initial validation efforts in two ways. First, we needed to create something more robust that we could put in the hands of customers without losing control of Richard’s intellectual property. Secondly, we needed a plan and resources that would enable Richard and eventually Gareth to join the business full time, so that they could market, sell, implement and support the product within other dealerships in the UK.

Instead of taking the risk of developing a pro-code platform, we introduced Richard and Gareth to DQ portfolio company, Blue Mongoose. Toby and his team delivered a working product initially using no-code tools, which offered a much more flexible, cost-effective alternative. This approach has enabled the team to adjust and iterate the product as they continue to learn more about their customers’ needs.

We also supported the founders with fundraising. This involved building the company vision, mission and messaging from scratch, defining DealerDoc’s value proposition, creating a full business plan and budget, and putting together all the materials and assets (deck, data room, shareholder documents, etc.) required to raise capital from both angels and institutional investors.

We helped Richard and Gareth to reach out to, pitch to, and negotiate with a mixture of angel investors and VCs, then supported them through due diligence, share issuance and beyond.

What were the results?

In just six weeks Richard and Gareth raised £326,000 — enough for Richard to take a salary and for ongoing product development and marketing, with their round led by UK-based VC, SFC Capital.

By the end of 2024 the team had signed a total of 14 dealerships, with tier-one brands in both automotive and construction.

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