Co-Founders Pete Silvoy and Tim Jones’ vertical marketplace app to connect car dealerships and qualified installers of after-market extras looking for work wasn’t just a new idea on how the dealership and installer workflow could operate. To them, it was Jobvious—oops, “obvious.”
Silvoy has ran a car paint protection shop (think: making your paint job look great longer) for 20 years. His company, TVP Auto in Raleigh, provided him with the experience necessary to envision Jobvious, which he and Jones began working on part-time around February.
Jones already had the knowledge of what it takes to run a startup through his high-performance car-sharing company, Hwyl Auto Club, in which members can “check out” luxury cars. But when Silvoy spoke to Jones about Hwyl Auto Club over coffee, he brought up his own startup idea, and Jones came onboard to help bring Jobvious to fruition.
Silvoy and Jones hope to begin Jobvious’s beta testing in August for the Raleigh area, bringing their mobile app to the hands of both car dealerships and installers to create a more efficient workflow.
“Most of these installers are [sole proprietors] trying to get extra work,” Jones said. “So they’re on their phone all the time. We wanted to try and make the workflow as easy as possible.”
Jobvious is boot-strapped right now, but Jones said the startup is looking for seed funding for what he perceives will be growing opportunities for the company. At the onset, the platform will offer installers for paint protection application, paint-less dent removal and window tinting.
“We know there’s going to be more and more of a demand for it,” Jones said. “Dealerships are going to want to have those skills available. And then for those dealers that don’t have that skill in house, we’re giving them the ability to add that on as an option.”
From Wales To Triangle
Jones’ own path that led to him becoming involved with Jobvious began with him moving from Wales to the United States decades ago for what he said was an adventure. His career includes time on the product side at mobile data and solutions provider Motricity, Bandwidth, and currently at PrecisionLender, a software company servicing commercial banks. Now a Triangle resident for 25 years, he has seen the area and its startup culture grow.
“There was dial-up internet in 1993, if you can believe that,” Jones said. “So there’s been a massive change.”
Those leaps in connectivity are what makes a platform like Jobvious possible. Jones said that Jobvious, which will have an application programming interface (API), will help installers gain more work that fits their calendars while providing dealers the opportunity to add new functionality and services. Dealers can choose to have a choice of the installers available or have their work immediately assigned to the first installer.
“It just streamlines their business process, and it also makes sure they don’t have to pick up the phone or roll through Google looking for people to do the work they need to get done,” Jones said. “And if they don’t need to hire that person to work at their dealership, then it gives them more flexibility as well.”
Jobvious’s business model is transaction-based, taking a percentage of each deal brokered on the platform. While focusing on North Carolina first, Jones is confident that Jobvious can expand to other markets both near and far.
“We don’t think this is [just] a national problem,” Jones said. “This is more of an international problem.”
