Raising $130 Million to Build the Future of Automotive Retailing AI
发布时间 2024-02-22 10:00:37 来源
You'd be shocked at how often we have countless anecdotes where people are asking, can I speak to Mia? She was so amazing. And it turns out Mia was actually, you know, the AI that they were conversing with. The future of conversational AI for car dealerships is being developed in Georgia, but not the Georgia you're thinking of. And it's already making a huge impact on how cars get sold here in America. Today I'm speaking with Devin Daley, CEO of Impel, a digital engagement platform that helps dealers communicate with customers using artificial intelligence. We discuss raising $130 million to create the next generation of automotive chat bots. What inspired the company's early pivot from the fashion industry into the automotive world? The challenge of training chat GPT to tell the truth and much more.
你会对我们经常听到的无数个轶事感到震惊，人们会问，我可以和Mia交谈吗？她太了不起了。结果发现，他们实际上在与AI Mia交谈。用于汽车经销商的会话式AI的未来正在佐治亚州开发，但不是你想到的那个佐治亚。它已经在美国汽车销售中产生了巨大影响。今天我与Impel的CEO Devin Daley进行访谈，Impel是一家数字互动平台，帮助经销商利用人工智能与客户沟通。我们讨论了筹集1.3亿美元用于打造下一代汽车聊天机器人的灵感来源。公司早期从时尚行业转向汽车行业的挑战，以及训练聊天GPT说实话的难题等等。
Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. What's up everyone? This is Car dealership guy. You're listening to the Car dealership guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. But before we get into the show, this episode was brought to you by Private Auto, the first transactional marketplace that enables a safe and secure way to buy and sell vehicles privately. Private Auto provides a self-service platform that removes the middleman and uses proprietary banking technology. This allows buyers and sellers to safely complete a private party sale on their own at any time. They've thought of it all, identity verification to avoid scams, an e-bill of sale to simplify the paperwork, instant transfer of money between buyers and sellers, and so much more. Learn more at privateauto.com and use code CDG to list your car for free.
不要忘记点击订阅，这样你就不会错过任何一集了。大家好！我是汽车经销商。你正在收听的是汽车经销商的播客，这是我努力为您提供对汽车市场最公正透明的见解的努力。但在我们开始节目之前，本集由Private Auto赞助，Private Auto是第一个提供安全可靠的私人买卖车辆方式的交易市场。Private Auto提供了一个自助平台，去除了中间商，并使用专有银行技术。这使得买家和卖家可以安全地在任何时间完成私人买卖交易。他们考虑到了一切，身份验证以避免欺诈，电子销售单简化文件工作，买家和卖家之间的即时资金转移等等。了解更多信息，请访问privateauto.com，并使用代码CDG免费列出您的汽车。
This episode is also brought to you by Valvely. You might know Valvely is the original motor oil. After all, they've been at it since 1866, but to their dealership customers, there's so much more. When you partner with Valvely in your dealership, not only gets access to legendary Valvely products, but also to their customer business solutions, marketing resources, consumer promotions, and other programs that go beyond the traditional supplier partnership. Valvely can help you drive your service department by streamlining operations and increasing revenue with hands-on to condition and sales advisor training, state-of-the-art service lane technology, and a robust preventative maintenance chemical program. They even have programs to help you sell more cars and increase trade-ins. What other fixed ops vendor can say that? So what's all this mean for you? Fewer vendors, more value, and a brand your customers know and trust. Valvely is reinventing how supplier partners with the dealership. For more information about how Valvely can become your ultimate fixed ops partner, visit partner.valvelyn.com or click the link in the show notes below.
本集节目也由Valvely赞助。你可能知道Valvely是最早的机油品牌。毕竟，他们自1866年起就一直在从事这项工作，但对于他们的代理商客户来说，Valvely还有更多的价值。当你与Valvely在你的经销店合作时，不仅可以获得传奇的Valvely产品，还可以享受他们提供的客户业务解决方案、营销资源、消费者促销活动以及其他传统供应商合作所无法提供的项目。Valvely可以帮助你实现服务部门的增长，通过简化运营和提高收入，如通过现场技术和销售顾问培训、先进的服务车道技术以及强大的定期保养化学产品计划。他们甚至还有一些项目可以帮助你销售更多汽车和增加二手车交易。还有哪家固定运营供应商能做到这一点呢？那么这一切对你意味着什么呢？更少的供应商，更多的价值，以及你的客户知晓并信任的品牌。Valvely正在重新定义供应商如何与经销店合作。有关Valvely如何成为您终极的固定运营合作伙伴的更多信息，请访问partner.valvelyn.com或点击下方节目说明中的链接。
So start of my career in sort of traditional Wall Street fashion, started at Merrill Lynch and their technology, M&A Division, did this sort of traditional two-year stint there and then moved into a private equity role in a company called Cambridge Associates. And I was on their vertical software team investing in vertical software as a service business is. Really fell in love with the model of SaaS and that it was predictable, the operating leverage that you're able to gain in a software as a service business. And when I came up with the idea for what became impel is we had invested in a bunch of what I would call e-commerce enablement products. So we invested in like a recommendation engine for e-commerce. We invested in a chat product for e-commerce. And what I realized was these e-commerce enablement products had really fast growth, great CSI scores, great gross retention rates, all the levers or KPIs you look for were stronger within that subset of our portfolio.
我的职业生涯始于传统的华尔街方式，开始于美林证券及其技术和并购部门，在那里进行了传统的两年工作，然后转向剑桥联合公司的私募股权角色。我当时负责他们的垂直软件团队，投资于垂直软件即服务业务。我真正爱上了SaaS模式，因为它是可预测的，能在软件即服务业务中获得经营杠杆。当我想出了成为impel的想法时，我们已经投资了一大批所谓的电子商务促进产品。例如，我们投资了一家电子商务推荐引擎，还有一家聊天产品。我意识到这些电子商务促进产品有着非常快速的增长、出色的CSI分数、出色的毛收入保留率，所有你寻找的杠杆或关键绩效指标都在我们投资组合的这一子集内表现更强。
When I started to peel back the onion to understand why that was, it was because they had such a demonstrable ROI case. If you're a chat product that plugs into Louis Vuitton, you can do the algebra that you took their conversion rate from 2% to 2.4% and that yielded Louis Vuitton 100,000 gross profit, for instance. So that's what we really, that's when we started racking our brain for what's the next thing in this e-commerce evolution and came up with 360 imaging, immersive 360 views of products for a tried and true way to improve e-commerce conversion, but there wasn't really an out-of-the-box solution to do that at scale. So that's what we set out to do initially targeting the fashion industry. Oh, so you were going fashion first. Now, what led you to taking this to automotive? Like, where did you, when did you discover that opportunity?
当我开始剥离洋葱以了解其中原因时，发现他们有一个明显的投资回报案例。如果你是一个与路易威登合作的聊天产品，你可以计算一下，将他们的转化率从2%提高到2.4%，这就给路易威登带来了10万美元的毛利润。这就是我们真正关心的问题，这就是当我们开始努力寻找电子商务发展的下一个目标时，提出了360度影像，沉浸式的产品360度视图，是一种信誉卓著的方式来提高电子商务转化率，但目前并没有一种可扩展的解决方案。因此，我们最初的目标是针对时尚行业。哦，所以你们首先关注时尚行业。现在，是什么让你们开始关注汽车行业？你们是什么时候发现了这个机会？
Yeah, great question. So we launched the business focused on fashion in 2014. We were based in Manhattan at the time. And I hired a gentleman from Reynolds and Reynolds, obviously one of the large automotive incumbent vendors. And when he changed his LinkedIn, I heard him work on a fashion business. But when he changed his LinkedIn profile, one of his dealer customers reached out to him and said, I see what you guys are doing in fashion. Is it possible that you can do this for cars? And I remember it like it was yesterday. It was St. Patrick's Day 2015. He and I went out to this guy's dealership. And 13 minutes later, the guy signed a contract for the highest contract value in the company's history for his dealership group, sort of centered in the Northeast. And you juxtapose that with selling into fashion where you've got four different ad agencies vying for their own interest before you make a change for Louis Vuitton's website. And we kind of knew we were onto something. We straddled both industries for six months and then in late 2015, decided to focus purely on automotive. Incredible.
是的，很棒的问题。所以我们在2014年开始了以时尚为重点的业务。当时我们位于曼哈顿。我从雷诺兹和雷诺兹公司聘请了一名绅士，显然他是其中一家大型汽车行业老牌供应商。当他在LinkedIn上改变了个人资料，我听说他在从事时尚业务。但是当他改变了他的LinkedIn个人资料时，他的一个经销商顾客联系了他，说：“我看到你们在时尚领域正在做的事情。你们可以为汽车做同样的事情吗？”我还记得那天像是昨天。那是2015年的圣帕特里克节。他和我去看了这个家伙的经销商。13分钟后，那家伙为他的经销商集团签署了公司历史上价值最高的合同。在东北部地区有着一定的影响。你可以将这与在时尚领域销售相提并论，你得先经历四家不同的广告代理机构为自己的利益而争夺才能为路易威登的网站做出改变。我们知道我们发现了一些东西。我们同时涉足这两个行业六个月，然后在2015年末决定纯粹专注于汽车行业。令人难以置信。
So, and then what was that initial insight, right? So you build this spin car tool at the time, right? Carvana had this already, if I remember correctly. And I remember very vividly, right? I didn't set up Getta Caria till the 2018, but I just remember very vividly doing research under booths. And I mean, Carvana's booths were no cheap thing. I mean, they spent hundreds of thousands on these booths. It was just really, really custom made. And so for you, when was that point for you? Did you reach that point when you were like, wow, this is a really, really big opportunity here. Arguably, you can arm the rebels, quote unquote, right? To let dealers sort of have the same type of experience or on a vehicle detail page on their website as a Carvana. When was that for you?
那么，最初的灵感是什么呢？你在当时开发了这个旋转汽车工具，对吗？我记得卡凡娜当时已经有了这个工具，如果我没记错的话。我记得非常清楚，我直到2018年才建立了Getta Caria，但我记得非常清楚在展位下进行研究。我的意思是，卡凡娜的展位可不是便宜的东西。他们在这些展位上花费了数十万美元。这些展位真的是非常特别定制的。那么对于你来说，什么时候达到了那个点？你是否曾经有过那种“哇，这是一个非常巨大的机会”的时刻？可以说，你可以“武装叛乱者”，让经销商在他们的网站上有与卡凡娜相同类型的体验或者在车辆详情页面上有相同类型的体验。对于你来说，那个时刻是什么时候？
Yeah, yeah, great question. So again, we initially launched in fashion. So we weren't super aware of Carvana once we started pivoting into automotive and started signing up dealers, we became aware. And you're exactly right. I think it was like $750,000 for each of those Carvana booth installations. And that was our whole thesis, right? Is we want to democratize this type of technology and this type of experience to every mom and pop dealer, as the auto industry is sort of on the precipice of this kind of e-commerce evolution, if you will. So that was kind of in that mid-2015 timeframe. And I think that's what made us realize we should focus purely on automotive and that it's a massive industry. And it was one of the last sectors to really experience full kind of e-commerce transformation.
是的，是的，好问题。所以，我们最初是在时尚领域推出的。因此当我们开始转向汽车行业并与经销商签约时，我们并不知道Carvana。您说得对。我记得每个Carvana亭子的安装费用大约是75万美元。而这正是我们的整个理论，对吧？我们希望将这种技术和体验民主化，让每家小店都能拥有，因为汽车行业正处于这种电商发展的边缘。这大概是在2015年中期左右。我认为这让我们意识到我们应该专注于汽车这个行业，因为它是一个庞大的行业，也是最后一个真正进行电商转型的行业之一。
In terms of entrepreneurship in general, was this like a bizarre kind of world for you? I mean, did you come from an entrepreneurial family? You were clearly in investment banking so this is obviously a shift. So what was that shift like for you? Certainly didn't come from an entrepreneurial family, came from a family of risk-averse medical professionals and to your point, I was on that Wall Street path of as they call it, the adage was seven figures in seven years. So when I struck out to start my own company, people thought I was crazy. That said, I always felt like I wanted to move faster than my career was allowing and make an impact. And it was held back a little bit by the administration bureaucracy of working large financial institution. So 2014 is when I decided to strike out of my own.
总的来说，创业对你来说是一个怪异的世界吗？我的意思是，你出身于企业家家庭吗？显然，你之前是从事投资银行业的，所以这显然是一个转变。那么，对于你来说，这种转变是怎样的？我并不是出身于企业家家庭，而是出身于一个风险规避型的医学专业家庭，正如你所说的，我一直走的是那条被称为“七年内赚七位数”的华尔街道路。所以当我决定开始自己的公司时，人们认为我疯了。话虽如此，我一直觉得我想要比我的职业发展允许的速度更快，产生更大的影响。而大型金融机构的管理官僚体制有时会阻碍我这方面的发展。所以2014年，我决定开始自己的创业之路。
So now take us through the evolution of your company. Because again, I see your name, your company, and I still think of Spincar because that's just what I was familiar with early on in the dealership days. I just remember using this. So today you do a lot more. Walk us, before we get into the business, I wanna understand the evolution of your company as an entrepreneur, right? From being just a car, kind of spin software for dealers so that people can get that carbon experience to everything you do today, which we'll get into. Tell us about that evolution. Yeah, absolutely.
现在让我们了解一下您的公司发展历程。因为我看到您的名字和公司，我仍然会想起Spincar，因为那是我在汽车经销商时代早期熟悉的。我记得当时使用过这个。所以今天您做的事情要多得多。在我们讨论业务之前，我想了解您作为企业家的公司发展过程，对吧？从最初只是为经销商提供汽车旋转软件，让人们可以获得汽车试驾体验，到今天您所做的一切，我们之后会详细讨论。告诉我们关于这个发展过程吧。是的，当然。
So again, started in fashion in kinda 2014, March of 2015, sold an onboard of our first dealership, Q4 of 15. We started letting our retail contracts expire. That's when we rebranded the company to Spincar and we were fully focused on the auto industry at that point. To your point, the initial product line was really focused on just merchandising the vehicle and again, providing that virtual, immersive tour of a vehicle.
所以，再次，我们在2014年开始进入时尚领域，2015年3月，在2015年第四季度卖掉了我们的第一个经销商。我们开始让我们的零售合同到期。那时我们重新将公司品牌定位为Spincar，完全专注于汽车行业。就您所说的，最初的产品线真的只是专注于车辆的搭配，并再次提供车辆的虚拟，沉浸式参观。
We realized the second pain point was related to feature and F&I and option merchandising and that vehicles are increasingly complex. It's increasingly difficult for somebody to understand the BMW, cruise control versus lane keeping assist on the Mercedes. And so we built out products that helped merchandise features as well as F&I solutions on a dealer's website.
我们意识到第二个痛点与汽车功能、F&I和选装产品销售有关，汽车变得越来越复杂。对于某人来说，理解宝马车和梅赛德斯轮速控制和车道保持辅助系统之间的区别越来越困难。因此，我们开发了产品，帮助销售商在经销商网站上展示汽车功能和F&I解决方案。
It was at that time that I think we realized we have this very valuable data exhaust coming out of our merchandising products. Again, because we deliver that rich viewing experience, it allows us to glean information about maybe Devin's a performance buyer because he clicked on the engine hotspot photo 17 times and the turbocharger video nine times. Interesting performance specs. Okay. And then that data is then used to custom tailor our AI responses. So that was really when we sort of came up with this AI thesis as we realized this exhaust data can power kind of next level personalization. And so came up with this thesis around artificial intelligence in the auto industry and we did two acquisitions in that space long before the hype of GPT. And that's really I think shifted the center of gravity of the business towards AI.
在那个时候，我想我们意识到我们的商品产品产生了非常有价值的数据尾气。再次，因为我们提供了丰富的观看体验，这使我们能够获取关于Devin可能是性能买家的信息，因为他点击了引擎热点照片17次，涡轮增压器视频9次。有趣的性能规格。然后这些数据被用来定制我们的人工智能回应。所以当我们意识到这些尾气数据可以推动下一级个性化时，我们真正想出了这个人工智能论点。因此，在汽车行业，我们提出了关于人工智能的论点，并在GPT炒作之前长时间进行了两次收购。我认为这真的改变了业务的重心转向人工智能。
That is very interesting and I never considered that. So tell us more about that, right? You are, you're able to see of course the hotspots. How have you used that information? Like how are dealers in the industry? How is it using that information? The first real use case of that data is in retargeting ad units. So that was the first kind of activation is, you know, if you see and Devin are looking at the same five series in Devin exhibit a performance centric behavior, like I just described, whereas Yossi clicks on safety features like the overhead airbag feature or the IHS safety rating sheet. If we leave the site and we are then retargeted with that same five series, there would be an additional level of tailoring. So I would get performance centric creative that might have 455 horsepower highlighted within the ad unit, whereas Yossi may get, you know, the IHS safety rating embedded into that ad unit. We find by adding that additional level of tailoring, click through rates are increased pretty dramatically.
这很有趣，我从来没有考虑过这点。所以告诉我们更多关于这个的信息，对吧？你能够看到热点是吧。你是怎么利用那些信息的？行业中的经销商们是怎么利用那些信息的呢？第一个数据的真正应用就是在重新定位广告单元中。所以首先的激活方式就是，你知道，如果你和Devin看着同样的5系轿车，而Devin展现的是性能为中心的行为，就像我刚才描述的那样，而Yossi却点击了诸如顶部气囊功能或IHS安全等级表之类的安全功能。如果我们离开网站后，然后被用同样的5系轿车重新定位，那会有一个额外的定制水平。所以我会看到强调455马力的性能为中心的创意在广告单元中，而Yossi可能会看到IHS安全等级嵌入到那个广告单元里。我们发现通过增加那个额外的定制水平，点击率会有相当大的提高。
Over the last couple of years, we've started also activating that through our AI communication platform. So same exact situation. If I look at performance centric features, Yossi looks at safety centric features. If we both submit leads or we engage with an AI based chat bot in that site asking, you know, is this vehicle available? The AI will respond confirming availability of that vehicle, but it will also then, you know, maybe inject something about performance or safety. Yes, the five series available. By the way, did you happen to notice this is the M package with 455 horsepower, for instance.
在过去几年里，我们也开始通过我们的AI通信平台来激活这一功能。所以情况完全一样。如果我关注性能特点，Yossi则关注安全特点。如果我们都提交线索，或者与那个网站上的基于AI的聊天机器人交流，询问某辆车是否可用，AI会回复确认该车辆的可用性，但也可能会插入一些关于性能或安全性的内容。是的，五系车可用。顺便说一句，你有没有注意到这是带有455马力的M套装呢？
So do you think that, do you think that today with your technology and generally speaking, where are industries headed? Do you think that dealers can really match that carvana, like, you know, merchandising experience online? Do you like, where are the biggest gaps? How do you think about that? Yeah, we do. Now with the advances that have happened and with computer vision and artificial intelligence background improvement and, you know, 3D backgrounding and things of that nature, absolutely. We recently launched a product called Virtual Booth that is designed to do exactly that, which is allow a dealership to shoot in various conditions outside on their lot. And then artificial intelligence and computer vision does all of that improvement, adjusts the sharpness, brightness of the vehicle, as well as does image segmentation to remove the background in and of enhance booth-like experience, absolutely.
你认为，随着科技的发展，以及行业的整体趋势，产业将走向何方呢？你认为经销商能否真正与carvana这样的在线销售体验相匹配？你认为最大的差距在哪里？你如何看待这个问题？是的，我们可以。现在随着技术的进步，计算机视觉和人工智能背景的提升，以及3D背景和其他类似的突破，绝对可以做到。我们最近推出了一个名为“虚拟展厅”的产品，旨在实现这一目标，允许经销商在各种室外条件下拍摄车辆。然后利用人工智能和计算机视觉进行所有必要的改进，调整车辆的清晰度和亮度，并进行图像分割以消除背景，从而提升展厅体验，绝对可以做到。
I wanna take a step back. You're offering various merchandising products, but what are in general, like, where's your company headed, right, what are you offering today? And then when you think about the evolution of the car dealership, right, what are you building in order to help car dealers keep evolving? Yeah, so merchandising is still a huge part of our business. And again, that's really focused on providing an immersive online experience that, you know, inspires confidence and trust remotely before somebody actually physically enters the dealership. So again, that's still, you know, the strong majority of our business. That said, over the last couple of years, we've done two acquisitions in the artificial intelligence space and have built out several additional AI activations. I think fundamentally, you know, our thesis is that dealerships today are massively human capital intensive. You know, the average main street mom and pop dealership has 150 employees, for instance.
我想要退后一步。你们提供各种商品，但总的来说，你们公司的发展方向在哪里，对吧，今天你们提供了什么？再就是说，当你考虑汽车经销商的发展，你们正在做些什么来帮助汽车经销商不断进步？是的，所以商品销售仍然是我们业务的一个重要部分。再一次强调的是，我们专注于提供一个沉浸式的在线体验，让人在实际进入经销商之前，就可以远程建立信任和信心。所以，这仍然是我们业务的主要部分。尽管如此，在过去几年里，我们进行了两次人工智能领域的收购，并开发了几个额外的人工智能应用。我认为从根本上说，我们的观点是，如今的经销商非常依赖人力资本。例如，普通的小型汽车经销商平均有150名员工。
And, you know, it's our belief that given margin pressure, you know, given OEM starting to go direct consumer, rising interest rates, new entrants and channels in the market, then over the next three to five years, we will see dealerships become less human capital intensive and more AI and automation enabled. And really our vision or what we're building towards is AI managing the entire lifecycle from selling the vehicle to doing AI, CSI surveying to, you know, selling F and I and accessory products post purchase to continuing to get somebody back into service their vehicle and build that bond of service loyalty. And then eventually using AI to actually acquire that vehicle, no one somebody's likely to sell that vehicle back based on, you know, driving habits or DMS data.
而且，我们认为随着利润压力的增加，随着原始设备制造商开始直接面向消费者，利率上涨，市场中的新进入者和渠道增加，未来三到五年，我们将看到经销商变得更少依赖人力资本，更多依赖人工智能和自动化技术。实际上，我们的愿景或者说我们正在构建的目标是让人工智能管理整个生命周期，从销售车辆到进行人工智能客户满意度调查，再到销售金融保险和购买后的配件产品，继续引导客户回到维修车辆并建立服务忠诚度的纽带。最终，利用人工智能实际获取这辆车，了解某人可能基于驾驶习惯或DMS数据而将其再次出售。
You seem to have a pretty strong opinion here, right? That AI will sort of infiltrate, will infiltrate every part of the sales process. And so how do you respond to the people that say, no, I want to talk to a human, I don't want, you know, to deal with a robot when I'm making the arguably the second largest purchase I'm going to be making in my lifetime, after home, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I would say that people need to really have a hard look at the conversation quality that large language models have unlocked. You know, I think a lot of that thinking is probably anchored around, you know, five or seven year old AI experiences, the conversation quality with LLMs is an order of magnitude better than, you know, what we saw three, four, five years ago.
你似乎在这里有一个相当强烈的看法，对吧？人工智能将会在某种程度上渗透到销售过程的每个部分。那么，你如何回应那些说，不，我想和人类交谈，我不想在我一生中可能第二大的购买时，与机器人打交道的人呢，当然，第一大的购买是家庭。是的，我会说人们真的需要仔细看看大型语言模型所打开的对话质量。我认为很多想法可能是基于五到七年前的人工智能体验，与大型语言模型的对话质量要比我们三四五年前看到的要好一个数量级。
And, you know, we've got countless examples wherein, you know, we compare an actual BDC wrap or sales person at the dealership compared to an AI generated response. And, you know, in a lot of cases, a BDC wrap is not following OEM guidelines, you know, they may not use the customer's first name, they may not thank them for interest in the vehicle, or, God forbid, you know, they're making typos or grammatical errors. AI doesn't do that, it will follow templates perfectly, all these spells complex OEM features accurately. And yeah, so I think my answer there is, you know, LLMs and AI have come up really long way in the conversation quality in the vast majority of cases is actually superior to human.
你们知道，在很多例子中，我们会比较实际的经销商销售代表和AI生成的回复。在很多情况下，经销商销售代表没有按照原厂指导方针，他们可能不使用客户的名字，也可能不感谢他们对车辆的兴趣，甚至可能出现拼写或语法错误。AI不会这样，它会完美地遵循模板，准确地拼写复杂的原厂功能。所以，我想说的是，在对话质量方面，AI已经在很大程度上超越了人类。
What dealership roles do you think are most at risk? I don't think we really view it as what roles are at risk. I think what we really think the role of AI is is giving a dealership the ability to offload those menial, repetitive tasks and allowing humans to focus on high value activities, like, you know, being on the phone, building relationships. Let AI do the drudgery of, you know, sending the car facts before or sending interior photos or, you know, answering questions about features and let your BDC team, your sales will be on the phone, you know, building that relationship, building that rapport. So that's really how we view it. Yeah, I saw a good quote. It was like, you won't be replaced by AI. You'll be replaced by someone that's using AI, by a human that's using AI, and is simply more efficient and effective. So I like that.
你认为哪些经销商角色最容易受到威胁？我认为我们并不真的把它看作是哪些角色会受到威胁。我认为我们真正认为AI的角色是让经销商能够摆脱那些琐碎重复的任务，让人类可以专注于高价值的活动，比如打电话、建立关系。让AI做那些繁琐的事情，比如发送车辆信息，发送内部照片，或者回答关于车辆功能的问题，让你的BDC团队，你的销售团队可以在电话中建立关系，建立融洽。这才是我们的真正看法。是的，我看到一个很好的引语。就是，你不会被AI取代，你会被使用AI的人取代，一个简单更高效更有效的人。所以我喜欢这个。
Yeah, I think that's it, right? You know, we think generally, you know, role types might change and, you know, yes, you know, sales reps will be working alongside AI models, but we don't view it as, you know, you can kind of get rid of, you know, half your sales team or anything like that.
是的，我想就是这样了，对吧？你知道的，我们普遍认为，角色类型可能会发生变化，是的，销售代表将与人工智能模型共同工作，但我们并不认为你能够裁减一半的销售团队之类的事情。
So from what you're seeing so far with, you know, your customers, your business, how are consumers reacting to this? Like, generally speaking, what is the sentiment with consumers? Are they, you know, I mentioned like, you know, some of the kind of, you know, the naysayers or, you know, the devil's advocate, you know, people saying, oh, I want to talk to our robot, great. But from a consumer perspective, what are you seeing?
目前您所看到的情况是，您的客户、您的业务，消费者对此有何反应？一般来说，消费者的情绪如何？对于消费者来说，他们是如何看待这个问题的？您是否遇到一些持负面态度的人，或者一些唱反调的人，他们可能会说，我想和机器人交流，太好了。但从消费者的角度来看，您看到了什么？
Yeah, from consumer perspective, I think they generally really appreciate the AI, you know, if you think about what the traditional sales experience is like, if somebody's submit to lead after hours, which is, you know, probably 55% of total lead volume, the average experience is that consumer is not responded to for 12, 14, 16 hours. And that's in an age when, you know, consumers are used to having access to everything at their fingertips.
是的，从消费者的角度来看，我认为他们通常非常欣赏人工智能，你知道，如果你考虑传统的销售经验是怎样的，如果有人在工作之外提交了线索，也就是说，总线索量的大约55%，消费者平均要等12、14、16个小时才能得到回复。而在这个时代，消费者习惯了手指尖上的一切。
With AI, they're responded to immediately 24 hours a day to get their questions answered. On the service side of the business also, you'd be surprised how many people actually thank the AI for proactively reaching out to them, letting them know that they're probably due for, you know, a routine maintenance 30,000 mile service, for instance. They view it almost as, you know, kind of a service concierge, if you will.
借助人工智能，他们可以立即在一天24小时内得到回复，以解答他们的问题。在业务的服务方面，你会惊讶地发现有多少人实际上会感谢人工智能主动联系他们，提醒他们可能需要进行例行维护，比如30,000英里的服务。他们几乎把它看作是一种服务礼宾，如果你愿意这么说的话。
They're always, you know, the AI is always in touch with them. They know they're doing what's right with the vehicle and they're generally appreciative of that. In regards to, you know, just quality of conversation, you'd be shocked at how often we have countless anecdotes where people are asking, you know, can I speak to Mia? She was so amazing. And it turns out Mia was actually, you know, the AI that they were conversing with.
他们总是和人接触，你懂的。他们知道他们对车辆所做的是正确的，通常是赞赏的。就对话质量而言，你会很惊讶我们经常有无数例子，人们问，我可以和米娅交谈吗？她太神奇了。结果发现米娅其实是他们正在交谈的人工智能。
Shut up. Yeah, consumer's general. Generally, really appreciate it. Is that the name of your agent, Mia? The newest and Senate, yeah, they can set it to whatever they'd like. They can set it. That seems to be a common one, probably, you know, it's got AI in the name or what have you. And they can set that up however they'd like.
闭嘴。是的，消费者通常很感激。这是你的代理人名字吗，米娅？最新的和参议院，他们可以设置成他们喜欢的样子。他们可以设置。这似乎是一个常见的选择，可能是因为它的名字中有AI，或者其他原因。他们可以根据他们的喜好进行设置。
Have you had any issues with confinement or just, you know, kind of keeping the agent on the right track? It's a great question. You know, we get asked all the time by OEMs and major dealer groups, oh, you know, chat GPT is available. Can I just, you know, plug that into my website? And our response is, you know, vehemently, we would not recommend that, you know, GPT unbridled will flatly lie about your business, which could have, you know, catastrophic reputational ramifications, number one.
你有没有遇到过约束的问题，或者只是保持经纪人走正轨方面有困难吗？这是一个很好的问题。你知道，我们经常被OEMs和主要经销商团体问到，哦，你知道，聊天GPT是可用的。我能不能把它接入我的网站？我们的回答是，坚决不推荐这样做。你知道，GPT不受约束会完全歪曲你的业务，这可能会造成灾难性的声誉影响，这是第一点。
Number two, you know, an off the shelf, LLM, is not typically really designed to drive business outcomes. It's designed to be kind of a novelty and have a back and forth conversation. It's real goal is to elicit a response and have the highest response and engage the rate possible. It's almost flirtatious in that way, if you will. It, again, doesn't drive for its business outcomes.
数字二，你知道的，一个现成的，LLM，通常并不是真正设计来推动业务结果的。它被设计成一种新奇的东西，进行一场来回对话。它真正的目标是引发回应，并获得尽可能高的回应和参与率。它在某种程度上几乎像是在调情，如果你愿意这么说的话。再次强调，它并不是为了实现业务结果而存在。
So we believe it's really critical to have an optimization layer. That's trained on automotive specific data, you know, that prevents those hallucinations and drives towards appointments or lead generation or whatever those business goals are. So dig in one level deeper there, right? Because how are you doing that then? If it's not just, you know, chat GPT, how are you doing this?
因此，我们认为拥有一个在汽车特定数据上经过训练的优化层是非常关键的，你知道，可以防止那些幻觉，并使之朝向预约、潜在客户或任何其他商业目标。因此，再深入一层来看，对吧？因为那样的话，你是如何做到的呢？如果不仅仅是通过聊天GPT，你是怎么做到这一点的？
I take generally, you know, our solution, RAI suite is purpose built for automotive retailing. So we use a variety of different models for model agnostic and use a kind of proprietary mix of our own homegrown models as well as foundational LLMs. We're constantly training our model via our own enhancements, prompt engineering and really fine-tuning based on more than six years of auto industry customer interactions and over a hundred million conversations.
我通常会说，你知道，我们的解决方案RAI套件是专为汽车零售打造的。因此，我们使用各种不同的模型来实现模型不可知性，并使用一种我们自己开发的模型以及基础的LLM的专有结合。我们通过自己的增强、即时工程和根据超过六年的汽车行业客户互动和超过一亿次交谈进行微调来不断训练我们的模型。
And, you know, really what we focus on is providing a tailored and customized platform, you know, for automotive retailing that, you know, again, prevents hallucinations and drives towards business outcomes. When you, so you mentioned business outcomes. What do you think is going to be the best application for AI, generally? It's funny, like we're talking about, so like AI in the dealership, you know, go back a decade ago, even five years ago, it was like, well, maybe not five, but maybe a decade ago, like what, right?
而且，你知道，我们真正关注的是提供一个定制和个性化的平台，你懂的，用于汽车零售，这种平台可以防止幻觉，并实现业务成果。当你提到业务成果时，你认为AI的最佳应用会是什么呢？很有趣，我们正在讨论，就像在经销商使用AI，你知道，十年前，甚至五年前，人们就会说，不，或许不是五年，但可能是十年前，你说呢？
The dealership, you know, has this like stigma as, you know, not being the most technologically advanced industry and whatnot and here we are. And so what do you think will be the best application as you kind of see this through? Yeah, I think fundamentally, you know, it's conversational AI, both from a chat standpoint, but also an asynchronous SMS and email response tool that's designed to number one, answer questions.
汽车经销商，你知道的，一直以来被认为是科技发展最不先进的行业之一，但现在我们已经跃跃欲试了。那么你觉得在这个过程中最适合的应用是什么呢？是的，我认为基本上，它是对话人工智能，既可以从聊天的角度来看，也可以作为一种异步的短信和电子邮件回复工具，旨在首先解答问题。
So, you know, again, our AI models can answer somewhere around 11,000 different intents, answer to 11,000 different intents. So it can answer questions about features, the car facts, interior photos. And if you really think about how long that would take a human being to respond to one of those inquiries, you know, it's probably an average of three to five minutes by the time you, you know, go find the VDP page, download the interior photos, attach them to an email and then send that out. So I think number one is generally answering questions.
因此，你知道，我们的AI模型可以回答大约11,000个不同意图的问题。它可以回答关于特性、汽车资料、内部照片等问题。如果你真的思考一下，一个人要花多久来回复这些疑问，你知道，平均可能要花三至五分钟的时间，你需要找到VDP页面，下载内部照片，将它们附加到电子邮件中，然后发送出去。所以我认为，首要问题通常是回答问题。
Number two is, you know, long-term follow-up. I think that applies to both sales as well as service from the sales side of the business. There's a high percentage of customers that are just in the market for a protracted period of time and not for bad reason. You know, they get maybe, you know, they submit a lead and then they get busy at work or they go on vacation or what have you. Most dealerships don't have the ability to follow up with somebody for more than, you know, three or four days with AI. It will follow up relentlessly for 51 days and stay engaged and keep, excuse me, keep that dealership top of mind when that consumer resurfaces right at the buy.
第二个是，你知道的，长期跟踪。我认为这既适用于销售，也适用于销售业务的服务。有很高比例的顾客只是在市场上停留了很长一段时间，而并非出于坏原因。你知道的，他们可能会提交一个线索，然后在工作中忙碌起来，或者去度假什么的。大多数汽车经销商没有能力在三四天以上继续跟进一位顾客。而AI能够在51天内不懈地跟进，并保持互动，在消费者再次浮出水面准备购买时保持经销商的首选。
I think the main goal of this is really driving towards an appointment, whether that's a sales appointment or a service appointment. Again, with AI, you can set an appointment directly in the CRM system, push a calendar, invite out to the consumer.
我认为这的主要目标是真正朝着约会推进，无论是销售约会还是服务约会。再次强调，有了人工智能，你可以直接在客户关系管理系统中设定约会，推送日历，并邀请消费者参加。
That's one thing dealerships love is, again, with 55% of leads coming in overnight, a lot of mornings they'll walk in and they'll have several appointments that were made completely hands-off by the AI during closure period. That's incredible. So when you say, so you're saying driving towards appointments, where are you seeing right now the biggest impact being made? With your, you know, the way you're partnering with dealerships and your technology, what is making would you say the biggest impact? And again, you can define biggest as, you know, the biggest delta from prior performance, whether it be profitability or customer experience, but I'm curious to know like where are you kind of seeing, you know, the movers and shakers here.
经销商喜欢的一件事情是，有55%的潜在客户是在夜间填写信息的，因此在很多早晨，他们走进办公室时会发现有几个预约完全是由人工智能在闭店时间内自动处理的。这真是令人难以置信。所以当你说到前往预约时，你现在认为所产生的最大影响是在哪里呢？通过你与经销商合作和你们的技术，你认为最大的影响是什么？再次，请你定义最大的影响，可能是与之前绩效的最大差异，无论是盈利能力还是客户体验，我很好奇你在这里看到的变革者。
Yeah, I mean, I think on the sales side of the business, we're seeing around a 20 to 30% lift in appointment sat rate, meaning, you know, leads divided by appointments will increase that by roughly 20 or 30%. And a big reason for that is with AI, we're touching each lead four times more than without using AI, meaning the outreach where we're doing text and email with AI is creating four times the number of touch points. On the service side of the business, we're seeing a huge amount of incremental RO volume.
是的，我觉得在业务销售方面，我们看到预约率提高了大约20至30％，这意味着，你知道的，将潜在客户数除以已预约的客户数将增加大约20或30％。其中一个重要原因是有了人工智能，我们接触每个潜在客户的次数比不使用人工智能时多四倍，这意味着通过使用人工智能进行文本和电子邮件的推广，我们能够创建四倍于以往的接触点。在服务业务方面，我们看到了巨大的增量RO交易量。
It's an average of around $45,000 per month in incremental, sort of comparing before versus after adopting service AI of incremental RO volume. One sort of tangential benefit we didn't necessarily expect going into this is because we're doing proactive service outreach, we're also seeing on average roughly a 30% reduction in inbound service phone call volume, which we all know is a massive problem in the industry with most service calls going.
每月平均大约45,000美元的增量是在比较使用服务AI前后的RO工作量增量。我们并没有预料到的一个有点离题的好处是，因为我们正在进行积极的服务外联，我们也看到了平均大约30%的入站服务电话量的减少，这对于行业来说是一个巨大的问题，大部分的服务电话会如此。
The worst, the worst. Yeah, you call into the dealership service. You can never get in touch with anyone. The bad customer experience, you know, you spend $50,000 on a Lexus or whatever, and you try to call in for your first or second service, and they don't answer. So yeah, AI can play a critical role in doing that pro act of outreach and allowing somebody to schedule completely online.
最糟糕，真是太糟糕了。是的，你打电话给经销商客服。你永远都联系不上任何人。这种糟糕的客户体验，你知道，你在一辆雷克萨斯或其他品牌上花了5万美元，然后你尝试打电话进行第一次或第二次维护，结果他们不接电话。因此，AI在这种主动外联中可以发挥关键作用，并允许用户完全在线安排日程。
Yeah, I mean, I think it's gotten a little bit better, but it's definitely one of the biggest pain points. Dude, you know what I wanted to ask you? I didn't want to cut you off as you were explaining earlier, but I had no idea that I'm looking, I just looked you up on Crunchbase. You guys raised $130 million.
是的，我的意思是，我觉得情况有些好转了，但肯定是其中一个最大的痛点。伙计，你知道我想问你什么吗？我刚才不想打断你的讲解，但我完全不知道我正在寻找的是，我刚在Crunchbase上查到了你们公司筹集了1.3亿美元。
Yeah, yep. So we originally mostly bootstrapped the business. And then in 2018, we raised a growth equity round with a group called Wavecrest Growth Partners. That was a $22 million growth equity round. And then in January of 2023, we raised $104 million round with Silversmith Capital Partners. Silversmith, we're also lead investors in dealer.com. So yeah, a total of roughly 130. That's amazing. So you guys are clearly well funded. Because the follow up question I was going to have for you was, you mentioned you made a couple acquisitions over the past couple of years. And I was going to ask you how you funded that, and what are these acquisitions that you made?
是的，是的。所以我们最初大部分是靠自给自足来发展业务的。然后在2018年，我们与Wavecrest Growth Partners这个团队进行了一轮增长股权融资。那次融资达到了2,200万美元。然后在2023年1月，我们与Silversmith Capital Partners完成了1.04亿美元的融资。Silversmith也是dealer.com的主要投资方。所以总共大约是1.3亿。这太棒了。所以你们显然是有充足资金支持的。因为我接下来要问的问题是，你提到过去几年进行了几次收购。我本来想问的是，你们是如何资助这些收购的，以及你们收购了哪些企业？
Yeah, so in May of 2021, we acquired a business out of the Republic of Georgia that was previously known as Pulsar. That is now what we've converted or rebranded as our sales AI product. Really? How did you find a business in the Republic of Georgia? How did this happen? Yep. We came up with this AI thesis. We're always talking to our dealer council about what are the highest ROI products, what are the companies that we should look at partnering or inter-rating with or potentially acquiring. And so we jogged this AI thesis by them. And some of them had used competitors. They'd used a conversion car, companies like that. One guy in the room said, I've tried them all.
是的，所以在2021年5月，我们收购了一家来自格鲁吉亚共和国的企业，之前被称为Pulsar。现在我们已经将其转换或重新品牌为我们的销售人工智能产品。
真的吗？你是怎么找到一个格鲁吉亚共和国的企业的？这是怎么发生的？
是的。我们提出了这个人工智能的论点。我们一直在和我们的经销商委员会讨论哪些产品有最高投资回报率，应该考虑与之合作或并入的公司。于是我们将这个人工智能的论点向他们传达。其中一些人曾经使用过竞争对手，他们使用了转化率公司等。有一位在座的人说，我都尝试过。
We believe in this AI category. And there's this company called Pulsar based on their Republic of Georgia. Their AI is 10x more intelligent than anything else that we've found. So the middle of COVID by co-founder and I flew out to the Republic of Georgia when there were still curfews going on. And we had to be home by six o'clock at night. It was very difficult to even travel into the country but loved the team and really were blown away by the technology. We've grown that team over there from 25 or 30 at the time of acquisition. It's now around 75 people, most are PhDs. Just amazing AI technologists.
我们相信人工智能这一领域。有一家名为Pulsar的公司，总部设在格鲁吉亚共和国。他们的人工智能比我们发现的任何其他产品都聪明10倍。因此，在COVID疫情的中期，我们的联合创始人和我飞往了格鲁吉亚共和国，当时那里仍然有宵禁。我们必须在晚上六点前回家。甚至进入这个国家都非常困难，但我们喜欢这个团队，并且对这项技术感到非常震惊。我们将那支团队从收购时的25至30人扩展到现在的大约75人，其中大多数是博士。他们是令人惊叹的人工智能技术专家。
Yeah, it's funny. It's so random. It feels like it kind of came out of nowhere Republic of Georgia. But that's cool that you actually execute on that. Did you go into this having an inquisitive mindset? Because founders typically, not always, but it's a bit of a transition process. Granted, you were investment banking background. So did that sort of give you that drive to think about acquisitions and where potentially a bolt on or another company can help you accelerate your growth? Yeah, I think so. And again, stepping into a different category, right? We had not done much with artificial intelligence.
是的，这很有趣。非常随机。感觉就像是突然冒出来的乔治亚共和国。但很酷的是你真的在执行这个计划。你开始时是抱着探究的心态吗？因为创始人通常，虽然不是总是，但这是一个过渡的过程。当然，你背景是投资银行。对吗？那是否激励你考虑收购和潜在的合并或其他公司如何帮助加速增长？是的，我想是。再次涉足不同的领域，对吧？我们之前并没有涉及太多人工智能。
So would we have acquired a merchandising product? Probably not because we had the in-house competency to build that. But when we're extending into a completely novel, new category with different technology stacks and infrastructure, it certainly made sense. That said, we have a very high bar when it comes to acquisitions. I think there's lots of well-funded companies like mine. And they try to buy anything in their segment and slam these companies together and find as much G&A synergy as possible. And that's really not been our model.
因此我们会获得一个商品吗？很可能不会，因为我们有内部能力去构建它。但当我们扩展到一个完全新领域，具有不同技术堆栈和基础设施时，这当然是有意义的。也就是说，我们对收购设定了非常高的标准。我认为像我的公司一样有很多资金充裕的公司。他们试图购买各自领域的任何东西，将这些公司合并在一起，并尽可能找到许多 G&A 协同效应。但这并不是我们的模式。
Again, we will only buy something. If we really think it completes that or gets us closer to that north star of using AI to manage the entire customer lifecycle and personalize touchpoints throughout the ownership journey. So we're clearly making lots of progress here as an industry. I've had lots of conversations about this topic and working technology, truly delivering this next level experience. I love how Doug Iro mentioned this on our one of my previous podcasts, president of Longo, Toyota.
我们只会购买那些我们认为能够实现或接近我们的北极星——利用人工智能来管理整个客户生命周期，并在所有权旅程中个性化接触点。因此，作为行业，我们显然正在取得很大进展。我已经就这个话题进行了很多讨论，并且在技术上真正实现了这种更高级别的体验。我很喜欢Doug Iro在我之前的一期播客中提到了这一点，他是Longo Toyota的总裁。
And he said, look, for me, he's like, I just care about what business problem do I have and how can I solve it? And if AI or technology is that solution, then so be it. When you see the continuously evolving nature here of AI playing into the dealership, right? What is the end game? What does that look like? And where are we headed, ultimately? Yeah, I think it touches on what we talked about earlier, which is AI managing that entire customer lifecycle and doing all asynchronous or chat-based communications for a dealership from again sales, Daffanion accessories to service and eventually vehicle acquisition. And again, really what we believe is that will not only help a dealership maximize consumer lifetime value, but really will have second order benefits reputationally and from a customer experience standpoint.
他说，对我来说，他就像是，我只关心我面临的业务问题以及如何解决它？如果人工智能或技术能成为解决方案，那就好了。当你看到人工智能在经销商中不断发展的情况，对吧？结局是什么？那会是什么样子？最终我们将走向何方？是的，我认为这涉及到我们之前谈到的，即人工智能管理整个客户生命周期，并为经销商从销售、配件到服务和最终车辆获取等方面提供所有异步或基于聊天的沟通。而且，我们真正相信这不仅将帮助经销商最大化消费者的终身价值，而且将从声誉和客户体验的角度带来二次效益。
If you think about the average customer experience today to your point, they make the second largest purchase of their life, they fall in love with their salesperson, they buy a vehicle, chances are they never hear from that dealership again, or if they do, it's just kind of an HTML marketing email, very non-personalized versus with AI. Yeah, no one said email, no one said that email. Yeah, exactly. It was AI, you've got Mia reaching out to you constantly reminding you about service, checking in with you as your big lifecycle going again, just from a customer experience standpoint, we believe it's materially better though what most dealerships do today. Based on your data and your insight, where are you seeing customers the most frustrated with the dealership experience? I think it's generally it's canned messaging and responses, it's inconsistency in regards to timeliness or the thoroughness or accuracy of answers, again, lacking personalization, almost tone-deaf to customer needs with kind of generic invitations to come to the dealership and test drive and like we talked about a second ago, the outbound is often generic offers, impersonal messages, kind of lowest common denominator messaging, whereas with AI again, you've got perfect one-to-one personalization in Taylor.
如果您想到如今普通顾客的购车经历，他们进行了人生第二大笔购买，他们会爱上销售员，购买了一辆车，但很有可能再也没有从那家车行收到任何消息，或者如果有的话，只是一封普通的HTML营销邮件，非常缺乏个性化。而使用AI则完全不同。是的，没有人说电子邮件，没有人说电子邮件。没错，正是AI，您将不断收到Mia提醒您进行维护保养，关心您的整个购车周期，就从客户体验的角度来看，我们相信这要比大多数车行目前所做的要好得多。根据您的数据和见解，您认为顾客在与车行的体验中最为沮丧的地方是哪里？我认为通常是因为在消息和回复上都是模板化的、缺乏及时性或答案的全面性或准确性不一致，再次，缺乏个性化，几乎是对客户需求的无感知，只是发出一般性的邀请来车行试驾，就像我们刚才谈到的那样，对外部而言往往是通用的优惠，无个人情感的信息，使用AI则可以得到完美的个性化服务。
When you think about dealerships doing this at scale, and when I made that scale, I mean just a couple years out from today, is this ultimately, right? So we know that it makes dealerships more efficient, but I think what we don't know yet is, how does it work with licensing, right? Like how is that gonna evolve? And when I say licensing, right, the data has to come from somewhere and you have to pay for that data. So what will we be in the situation as an industry? Do you think where we're gonna get into some like licensing issues where it actually ends up being more cost prohibitive because you have to pay for this data and then that kind of cancels out the added benefits? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean, I would say fundamentally, I think to your point, we're just scratching the surface of what an AI-enabled business world and society will look like in the next three to five years and what we can achieve. We believe that the advent of large language models are really on par with the invention of the personal computer. In regards to licensing, I think one thing people don't necessarily realize about working with a company like GPT is if you expose that to your own training data or CRM conversations, it becomes a part of the public domain for that specific model, which again is why we've taken the approach of kind of siloing off our own open source versions of models that we then can train with our 100 million conversations.
当你考虑到经销商在规模上这样做的时候，当我说规模，我指的是从今天起只有几年的时间，这最终是对的吗？所以我们知道这会使经销商更有效率，但我认为我们目前尚不清楚的是，它如何与许可证制度配合，对吧？比如这将如何发展？当我说许可证，数据必须来自某个地方，你必须为这些数据付费。所以作为一个行业，我们将会处于怎样的情况？你认为我们会遇到一些许可证问题，实际上会变得成本难以承受，因为你必须为这些数据付费，而这种成本又抵消了额外的好处？你考虑过这个问题吗？是的，我认为从根本上来说，我认为你指出的，我们仅仅是在探索AI技术在未来三至五年内的商业世界和社会将会是怎样的，以及我们能够实现什么。我们相信大型语言模型的出现实际上与个人电脑的发明相媲美。至于许可证，我认为人们并不一定意识到与像GPT这样的公司合作时的一点是，如果你将其暴露于自己的训练数据或CRM对话中，它将成为该特定模型的公共领域的一部分，这也是为什么我们采取了将我们自己的开源模型隔离开来的方法，然后我们可以用我们的1亿次对话来对其进行训练。
So in terms of how cost prohibitive it will be, I think we've seen nothing but things getting cheaper, like OpenAI initially came to market at, let's call whatever, X price and a couple of months later, they caught that by an order of magnitude, they basically 90% discount. We've seen that kind of across the industry. So I think generally as we see in technology, things will become more efficient and more affordable. But I do think there's important things to take note of as it relates to data ownership and again, not exposing proprietary training data to the public domain.
在成本方面，我认为我们已经看到了一些价格越来越便宜的趋势，就像OpenAI最初进入市场时，价格是X，几个月后价格缩水了十倍，基本上打了九折。我们在整个行业中也看到了类似的情况。我认为通常情况下，随着科技的发展，东西会变得更加高效和更加负担得起。但我认为在数据所有权方面有一些重要的注意事项，再次强调不要将专有的训练数据暴露在公共领域。
All right, so dude, I wanna shift gears. When we were doing research, I read that you recently partnered with ACV auctions. Again, also timely, I just hadn't shown even on the podcast as a co-founders, no longer there, but he was a co-founder. Anyways, the first thing I think about when I hear an AI on a Vodiv company and ACV auctions partnering, I think, are we gonna have buyers anymore or are we gonna be buying cars using AI? So tell us more about this partnership. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the setup for this partnership is, we believe over the last three years since COVID, that dealerships have woken up to the need to control their own destiny as it relates to use vehicle acquisition. I think they realized during the COVID days that supply chains are brittle and therefore you can't really rely on your OEM display, you would new inventory and you realized that auctions are unpredictable and carry pretty high fees. And so what we've seen is a huge number of dealerships are standing up, their own car buying centers or their own car buying strategies. The problem is, car buying leads are notoriously low, low engagement, right? There's a huge number of tire kickers, price checkers, people that just want to know they're in an equity position.
好的，兄弟，我想变换话题了。在我们进行研究时，我读到你最近与ACV拍卖合作。再次，我在播客中甚至没有展示为创始人，但他是一位创始人。无论如何，当我听到AI与Vodiv公司和ACV拍卖合作时，我想到的第一件事是，我们还会有买家吗，还是我们将使用AI购买车辆？所以告诉我们更多关于这个合作。
是的，当然。我们认为过去三年自疫情以来，经销商已经意识到控制自己命运的需要，尤其是在二手车采购方面。我认为他们在疫情期间意识到供应链脆弱，因此你不能只依赖于OEM展示，需要新车库存，你意识到拍卖是不可预测的，费用很高。因此我们看到大量经销商正在建立自己的汽车购买中心或者自己的汽车购买策略。问题是，购车线索通常参与度很低，有很多人只是随意看看，核查价格，只是想知道他们的资产情况。
So it's difficult to get humans to even call those leads. That said, it's the perfect market or the perfect segment of leads or opportunities for AI to go after to really filter out who the real sellers are and serve those up. And so what we've done with ACV is partnered with their clear car valuation appraisal tool, wherein our AI will respond to all of those leads, drive them down the funnel, drive them towards setting a physical in-store appraisal appointment or completing the virtual computer vision base to praise all that ACV clear car offers today. So yeah, we're pretty excited about it. Before we wrap up, I want to get your take, right? You're building some really great tech here to just improve the overall experience with dealerships as you think about the next five years coming out of this. Less so on the tactics, but how do you think ultimately this pushes our industry forward? What does that look like given the way, just the speed of technology adoption, every dealer that I speak with now, mostly the larger ones, of course, but they have someone dedicated just to this. And I think it's also another reason why you're seeing a lot of dealers who are selling out to bigger dealers or consolidation, right? Because the industry has gotten more complicated. There's just no doubt about it.
因此，要求人类甚至只是打电话给这些潜在客户都很困难。话虽如此，这是AI能够追踪的完美市场或完美潜在客户或机会段，以真正过滤出真正的卖家并为其提供服务。因此，我们与ACV合作，与他们的明确汽车估价评估工具合作，我们的AI将回应所有这些潜在客户，将它们引向销售漏斗，引导他们安排进行实际的门店评估预约或完成今天ACV清晰汽车提供的基于虚拟计算机视觉的估价。所以，我们对此感到非常兴奋。在我们结束之前，我想知道你的看法，对吧？您正在构建一些非常优秀的技术，以改进与经销商的整体体验，考虑未来五年从中产生。不仅仅是策略，而是您认为最终这将如何推动我们行业向前发展？考虑到技术采用的速度，每位经销商现在几乎都有专门负责此事的人，尤其是较大的经销商，这也是为什么您会看到许多经销商正在卖给更大的经销商或合并的另一个原因，对吧？因为这个行业变得更加复杂，这是毫无疑问的。
And to keep up with this stuff, I think technology is obviously making it easier for the smaller guys to compete with the bigger guys, but nonetheless, just understanding and figuring your way through all this has been quite a mission as it's gotten more sophisticated. What do you think that those next five years look like for our industry? Yeah, yeah. Some of it's, you know, what we touched on earlier, which is, you know, we think dealerships will go from being massively human capital intensive to really, you know, AI in automation enabled. And, you know, I think to your point, right? You know, all of the large publics have an AI strategy today. And, you know, we really believe that the mom and pop dealers should be investing alongside them. And, you know, solutions like what we offer are equally, if not more applicable to a mom and pop dealer, then they are to a large, large public. So, but yeah, I think, again, what we're gonna see is AI and automate, excuse me, AI and automation enablement, kind of across the spectrum from mom and pop dealerships all the way up to enterprise groups and OEMs.
为了跟上这些发展，我认为技术显然正在让小公司更容易与大公司竞争，但尽管如此，理解和应对所有这些已经变得更加复杂。你认为未来五年对我们行业会是什么样子呢？是的，是的。其中一些是，你知道，我们前面提到的，经销商将从极度依赖人力资本转变为真正依赖AI和自动化技术。你说得对，对吧？所有大公司今天都有AI战略。我们真的相信小经销商应该和他们一起投资。我们提供的解决方案同样适用，甚至更适用于小型经销商，而不仅仅是对大型公司。但是，我认为我们将会看到的是AI和自动化的支持，从小型经销商一直到企业集团和原始设备制造商。
Any juicy acquisitions on the horizon that you're thinking about? We're always looking for stuff, absolutely. You know, so please do reach out. If you're interested in, you know, discussing or doing a demo or, you know, looking at a partnership, you know, we, again, have a very high bar and, you know, only want to buy things that, you know, advance our strategic vision towards using AI to manage the entire customer lifecycle. So, nothing definitive today, but, you know, hopefully in 2024. I asked you earlier about all the products you offer, but what is your most popular product? I would say our sales AI product that automates, you know, sales outreach via SMS and email, responds to leads, answers questions, does the long-term follow-up, sets appointments and really drives people down the funnel? So that is our, you know, that's our highest growth and highest revenue for you today. Incredible. I mean, where does spin car? I mean, spin car is the OG, no more, huh? Most distribution but lower price point products.
有没有什么令人兴奋的收购计划在即？我们一直在寻找机会，绝对是的。如果您有兴趣讨论或进行演示，或者考虑合作伙伴关系，请务必与我们联系。我们的标准非常严格，只想要购买能推动我们利用人工智能管理整个客户生命周期战略愿景的事物。所以今天还没有明确的计划，但希望在2024年可以有所进展。之前我问过您提供的所有产品，但哪个是您最畅销的产品？我会说我们的销售AI产品最受欢迎，它通过短信和电子邮件自动化销售推广，回应潜在客户，回答问题，长期跟进，设置约会并真正推动客户到销售漏斗中。所以这是我们今天的最高增长和最高收入产品。真令人难以置信。那么旋转汽车呢？旋转汽车是原始的产品，但价格更低。
So yeah, that spin car is installed or, you know, a 360 walk-around product is installed in probably 6,000 dealerships across 53 countries, 53 markets today. You know, merchandising as a whole is still the bulk of our revenue and is certainly, you know, an area that we continue to be focused on. What we're seeing with merchandising, you know, we still sell it direct to tier three, but it's also being bought by manufacturers as kind of a top-down mandate type solution, you know, because we think at this point, if you're not using a product like ours, consumers are starting to ask why it started to become, you know, 360 imaging is starting to become almost standard in the auto retail.
所以是的，那个360度漫游车辆产品已经安装在大概6000家跨越53个国家的经销商处。你知道，整体而言，商品推销仍然是我们收入的主要来源，并且我们肯定会继续专注于这个领域。关于商品推销，我们发现我们仍然直接向第三方销售，但也被制造商购买作为一种自上而下的解决方案，因为我们认为如果你不使用我们这样的产品，消费者开始询问为什么，开始成为汽车零售行业的标准几乎是360度图像。
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. It's sort of become table stakes, right? People expect it, you need to offer it. Last question here, you mentioned you have a high bar for acquisitions. What does that mean to you? Because I'm sure, you know, I met someone this weekend, they specifically brought up this topic to me, they're a listener of the podcast, and they specifically said that, you know, they loved the, you know, the founder and acquisition questions. And so it's super top of mind. So I'm curious, what does that mean to you, right? What are, what do you say things that are aligned with their strategic vision and a high bar? What does that really mean?
是的，我同意这一点。这已经成为一种基本要求，对吧？人们期望这样做，你需要提供。最后一个问题，在这里，你提到你对收购设立了高标准。对你来说，这意味着什么？因为我肯定，你知道，我周末遇到了某人，他专门向我提到了这个话题，他是播客的听众，他特别说，他喜欢创始人和收购相关的问题。所以这是非常重要的。我很好奇，对你来说，这是什么意味着，对吧？你说的那些与他们的战略愿景一致，高标准，这到底意味着什么？
Yeah, again, you know, it's not our strategy to buy anything that ends in, you know, dot car or dot auto, and even if there's no kind of products, energy, slam the companies together as a way to find incremental e-bit. For us, it's, you know, really finding strongly differentiated products with, you know, durable competitive modes and things that drive an ROI for a dealer. And ideally, you know, the UTA's mission critical, you know, not something that people throttle on and off or, you know, can replace easily with a competitor, but something that's differentiated and really a core part of that, you know, dealer's operating strategy.
是的，你知道，我们的策略并不是购买以.car或.auto结尾的任何东西，即使没有产品，也不会把公司拼接在一起来寻找增量电子商务。对我们来说，真正重要的是找到具有明显区别的产品，具有持久的竞争优势和能够为经销商带来投资回报率的产品。最理想的情况是，这些产品对经销商至关重要，不是人们随意切换或轻易替换的东西，而是具有差异化的，真正是经销商经营策略的核心部分。
You know, you just mentioned something that came to mind. You said software that people can, you know, replace easily. Did you have early on in your career building in PAL, especially when you were just, you know, a spin car tool early on? And I say that in, you know, it's just one product, right? Very, you know, very easily for a bigger company to just come in and kind of squash you out of the market. Did you have any OSHIP moments like that? Did you ever fear like, hey, are we gonna actually make it? Did you have that part of your journey? Certainly at the OSHIP moments, no doubt, you know, it's a rollercoaster, absolutely, especially in the early days, especially as, you know, kind of a bootstrap business. You know, that said, we proceed to competitive strategy, wherein, you know, we really focused on building out the ecosystem of integration partners.
你知道，你刚才提到的一些东西让我想起了一些事情。你说的软件，人们可以很容易替换。在你职业生涯的早期阶段，特别是当你刚开始时创立PAL时，你有过类似的经历吗？我觉得这只是一个产品，对吧？对于一家更大的公司来说，很容易就可以进来并抢占市场。你有过这样的危机时刻吗？你有过担心，我们真的能成功吗？你在旅程中有过这种经历吗？毫无疑问，在危机时刻，你知道，这是一次过山车般的经历，特别是在早期，尤其是作为一家创业企业。不过，我们采取了一种竞争战略，重点是建设整合合作伙伴生态系统。
So we became the, you know, exclusive integrated merchandising provider to many of the third party listing sites, many of the peer to peer market places. And that kind of allowed us to box out competition wherein at their only function on a dealer's website, but our merchandising products syndicated to this huge network of classified sites, it was difficult for a competitor to displace us because of that. Well said, well said, it's a great strategy. So speaking of partnerships, are you, which I think by the way is a very smart strategy, right? You're right, that does sort of box out competition, especially early on when you're a tech product, which is, you know, pretty easily, it means commoditized in a way.
所以我们成为了，你知道的，许多第三方列表站点，许多点对点市场的独家综合营销提供商。这种做法使我们有机会排挤竞争对手，因为他们只能在经销商的网站上发挥作用，而我们的营销产品则被传播到了这个庞大的分类网站网络上，这让竞争对手很难取代我们。说得好，说得好，这是一个很好的策略。所以谈到合作伙伴，你，顺便说一句，这是一个非常聪明的策略，对吧？你说得对，这确实在一开始时可以排挤竞争，尤其是当你是一种技术产品，很容易被商品化的时候。
What about manufacturers? Like have you done any partnerships on a manufacturer side? Certainly, yeah, we're seeing manufacturers start to adopt our merchandising products and kind of mandate them top down, but more specifically to AI, over the last year, we've seen a lot of manufacturers coming to us. You know, they see that tier three communications happening at the dealer level are brand non-compliant and they're asking us, you know, instead, can we establish AI based communication protocols at the tier one level, cascade those down to tier three dealerships and, you know, maybe as part of that, the OEM gets some insights back about, you know, what tier three consumers are asking about or, you know, what those tier three conversations look like. So we've definitely seen demand there. The second area, you know, as manufacturers have invested a lot in consumer data platforms and really see AI as a key activation to those CDPs, AI is not restricted in the same way that most CDP activations are, you know, it's not restricted by limitations of an ad network.
制造商怎么样？像你们在制造商方面有没有做过任何合作？当然，是的，我们看到制造商开始采用我们的销售产品，并在从上至下的层面进行强制规定，但更具体地说到人工智能，在过去的一年里，我们看到许多制造商来找我们。他们意识到在经销商层面发生的三级沟通不符合品牌标准，并询问我们是否可以在一级层面建立基于人工智能的通信协议，将其级联到三级经销商，并且，作为一部分，原始设备制造商可以从中得到一些关于三级消费者在询问什么，或者这些三级对话是什么样的见解。因此，我们确实看到有需求。第二个领域，随着制造商在消费者数据平台上投入了大量资金，真正将人工智能视为这些消费者数据平台的关键激活点，人工智能不像大多数消费者数据平台激活那样受到限制，它不受广告网络限制。
And so it really allows for full kind of unbridled personalization powered by an OEM CDP. And when you say they're mandating the products, what specific products are most important to the manufacturers right now? I think, again, because, you know, 360 views have kind of become table stakes, we're starting to see that be either mandated or heavily incentivized at the manufacturer level. We're also seeing, you know, our feature tour product be just built into OEM certified websites.
因此，这确实允许通过OEM CDP提供的全面个性化。当您说他们正在强制订购产品时，目前哪些特定产品对制造商最重要？我认为，因为360度全景视图已经变得普遍，我们开始看到在制造商层面，这些产品要么被强制要求购买，要么受到重大激励。我们还看到我们的产品展示功能已经直接集成到经认证的OEM网站中。
So again, that's our product that helps, you know, articulate using rich explainer content, you know, OEM features and articulate, again, the difference between adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist, for instance, by embedding, you know, rich multimedia content directly in the website. So that's something that, you know, again, is just being integrated as part of OEM programs. Well stated, my friend, Devin Daley, thanks very much for coming on. If anyone's interested in learning more, we'll put the link in the show notes below.
所以，这就是我们的产品可以帮助您清晰地表达，使用丰富的解释内容，了解OEM功能并清晰地表明例如自适应巡航控制和车道保持辅助之间的区别，通过在网站中直接嵌入丰富的多媒体内容。这正是作为OEM项目的一部分被整合的东西。很好地陈述了，我的朋友Devin Daley，非常感谢您的参与。如果有人对了解更多感兴趣，我们将在下面的节目说明中放上链接。
And pal, check it out. Devin, this was really fun. Thanks for coming on, man. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating, consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time. Yeah.
朋友，看看这个。Devin，这真的很有趣。谢谢你来参加，伙计。当然。谢谢你邀请我。非常感激。好的。希望你喜欢这一集。请为播客打分，考虑订阅节目，并查看节目说明中的链接。谢谢收听。下次见。是的。