There’s something about auto dealer startups in Buffalo and traction (not the kind found on tires)
Streamline Auto started in 2018 as an internal tool developed by John Schultz at West Herr Auto Group.
The huge dealership, which has more than 40 stores, needed a way to help credit-challenged customers find cars they could responsibly afford.
What started as a tool used by a handful of employees eventually spread throughout the organization. By 2020, West Herr had turned it into a product and started selling it to other dealers.
Several years later, Streamline was a moderate success. But inside a company the size of West Herr, it barely registered.
So West Herr spun it out as a separate company, with Schultz, his colleague Matthew Lasher and West Herr as its owners.
“West Herr didn’t really need Streamline to succeed, and we knew that without 100% of our focus on it, it would probably die,” Lasher said. “So we made the decision to turn it into a startup and see what it was really capable of.”
The answer: a lot.
As Schultz and Lasher struck out on their own and looked for a more aggressive growth path, they came to an important realization. Streamline provided value to consumers and dealers, but much of that value ultimately accrued to the lenders.
The banks. Those were the customers.
Streamline has been bootstrapped so far, but it now has 10 full-time employees and, at $3 million in revenue, has reached approximate break-even.
Perhaps more importantly, it is in the final stages of negotiations with several national lenders on deals that would roughly double the size of the company.
The experience has also given Lasher, formerly an executive inside one of Western New York’s most successful companies, a different perspective on growth-stage entrepreneurship.
He connects some of that perspective to his oldest son, who has Down syndrome. The challenges his family encountered ultimately opened a new frontier of empathy, compassion and love in their lives.
“We are of course trying to make good decisions, hire the right people, keep it alive and strive toward a successful outcome,” he said of Streamline. “But you’ve also got to focus on the journey. All the things I’ve learned in my life have been through difficulties and challenges.”
