Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010
Road to Palm Springs

Dale Pollak

vAuto, Inc.
Oakbrook, Illinois

Being legally blind was never an impediment to Dale Pollak’s “vision.” He followed in his father’s footsteps in the retail automotive business but quickly realized that car sales had historically been a primarily visual business. Since he could not see the cars, this approach did not make sense to Pollak. So he learned to understand and use the underlying financial information that gives each car a distinct value.

Pollak developed an innovative technique for extracting automotive data from the dealership’s computer system. His technology was licensed to provide data for many of the most important automotive retail solutions in the industry. After selling this start-up business in 2007, Pollak used some of the proceeds from the sale to build and create a new software company based on his unique perspectives from the retail automotive business.

Working with a colleague from his days at the dealership, this new venture became vAuto, Inc. They began mapping out an innovative software idea that they believed would revolutionize the used car sales business by identifying inefficiencies, cost and pricing issues and the competition in the market. He struggled getting his software into the hands of key decision-makers, but once he did, word of mouth helped him continue the success.

In 2009, annuals sales nearly doubled the previous year. Now more than 2,500 franchised and independent dealerships use vAuto software to appraise, stock, price and merchandise their used vehicles.