Chris Hoke has an unusual qualification for someone whose business depends on organizing information: he is willing to let a little chaos hang around. A car dealership needs accurate prices, sensible buying plans and a clear view of its inventory. A software company trying to improve those things sometimes needs an idea that interrupts the meeting.
“We allow a certain amount of chaos to remain,” he said in 2022. He described it as a way to expose problems and make repairs. At the time, VINCUE was expanding its products and hiring local talent, largely through referrals. Hoke wanted people who could move when the work changed. Neatness had its uses. So did the occasional untidy discovery.
That preference helps explain an otherwise unlikely combination of jobs. Hoke is VINCUE’s founder, chief executive and chief technology officer. He carries responsibility for the business and its technical direction. Those roles put a practical question in his lap: how do you keep a system dependable while giving the people building it permission to change their minds?
“We allow a certain amount of chaos to remain.”
Chris Hoke · 2022
Billboard, then back to the lot
Hoke came to that question through software. His career includes leading software development at VinSolutions and serving as chief enterprise architect at Billboard. Automotive retail and the music business make an odd-looking pair on a résumé. Both, however, involve turning information into something people can use. In Hoke’s working life, the architecture of a system has repeatedly mattered as much as its individual features.
VINCUE’s own account credits him with leading the development team that created VinSolutions. By the time he started his next automotive venture, he already knew the industry from inside its software. That background gave him a different vantage point from a dealer buying a technology package and hoping the promised efficiencies would arrive with the login.
In 2015, Hoke launched VINCUE with Brian Kellogg and Jeff Rice. Kellogg and Rice remain part of the company’s technical leadership. The founding story matters because the product’s scope is broad: buying, appraising, managing, merchandising and selling vehicles all belong to the same working cycle. Connecting those decisions requires people who understand what happens underneath the screen, including what one change may break somewhere else.
The other half of the conversation
Danny Zaslavsky brings the dealership side of that equation. His experience includes running Country Hill Motors in Merriam, Kansas. Where Hoke brings software architecture, Zaslavsky brings the daily consequences of using it. Their partnership gives a product discussion two useful kinds of resistance: what the system can do, and what a dealership actually needs done.
The distinction becomes tangible in an appraisal. A used vehicle has mileage, equipment, history and a place in its local market. A dealer must decide what to pay before knowing exactly when it will sell. Hoke’s work is concerned with getting relevant information into that decision. Zaslavsky’s experience supplies the operating context in which a technically correct answer still has to earn its keep.
In January 2024, the team introduced a redesigned Executive Dashboard and appraisal interface. The dashboard connected performance measures to actions across inventory, making it possible to move from a high-level view to a particular vehicle or acquisition opportunity. The ambition was modest in the best sense: help a manager notice something, understand it and do something about it. A dashboard that merely looks busy has already found its easiest customer.
When the customer gets a vote
One of the more revealing VINCUE product stories began with a competition. At UNLEASHED 2023, dealers worked on proposals for new features. The team led by Bob Kain won with an idea that became Value Rank, an appraisal signal concerned with how a vehicle might perform in a particular dealer’s market.
By the following January, the concept was part of the company’s appraisal announcement. A customer gathering had supplied material for the product itself. That is a more demanding form of listening than collecting compliments after a demonstration. It gives people outside engineering a chance to influence what engineering builds.
The same operating preference appeared in January 2026, when Daniel Govaer joined as senior product strategist, reporting directly to Hoke. Govaer’s remit included writing real-world use cases, prioritizing the roadmap, working with engineering and design, and visiting dealers for testing and requirements gathering. The reporting line puts dealership experience near the executive who also directs the technology. It makes the feedback harder to misplace on its journey through the organization.
Money with a working relationship attached
Growth brought different kinds of backing. In April 2021, Cypress Growth Capital announced $3 million in non-dilutive funding for VINCUE. The planned uses included expanding marketing and adding software features. Hoke described a market in which buyers were doing substantial research before arriving at a dealership. Dealers needed tools that reflected those changed habits.
The financing choice also reveals a practical founder’s concern: how to fund expansion while preserving ownership. Cypress’s investment supplied growth capital without an equity round. That does not make it a universal prescription for startups; it makes it one specific choice Hoke’s company made at a particular point in its development.
In August 2023, VINCUE completed a Series B led by Holman, with Autotech Ventures and Automotive Ventures also investing. Holman had started as a customer, piloting the platform at several dealerships. The relationship then expanded into investment and plans for broader deployment. For Hoke, the next work included strengthening development, performance management and operations. More demand made the mundane parts of running a software business more consequential. An investor’s enthusiasm still has to survive a customer’s Monday morning.
The software has to leave the desk
Hoke’s product decisions often turn on a fairly ordinary observation about work. When VINCUE expanded mobile functionality for its Vehicle Buying Center in February 2022, he pointed to smaller dealerships where the general manager or used-car manager also handled buying. Those people could spend much of the day away from their desks.
The mobile additions covered private-seller opportunities, communication, appointments and offers. The reasoning was straightforward: software built around a stationary buying agent would fit some stores and inconvenience others. The phone could carry more of the process to the person doing it. It is a useful glimpse of Hoke thinking about the physical habits of a job, rather than just the fields in a database.
By 2025, adoption itself had become a product concern. Hoke and COO Nicki Hodges identified an opportunity to improve dealer onboarding, and Amanda Dominguez became VINCUE’s first Launch Coordinator. Later that year, Hoke and Zaslavsky introduced the RockED integration with Matthias Stoever. Its Copilot training used short videos taught by VINCUE performance managers inside the application. A feature can be available and still be practically invisible. Teaching someone where it lives is part of delivering it.
Getting the systems to talk
For all the emphasis on a unified platform, much of Hoke’s later work has involved collaboration with other companies. In July 2024, DriveCentric’s integration allowed dealerships to bring VINCUE appraisal information into its trade-in workflow. In March 2025, the CarNow partnership extended VINCUE market valuations into another digital retail environment. Both addressed the handoff between systems a dealer might already use.
At UNLEASHED25, Hoke and Zaslavsky welcomed Team Velocity CEO David Boice to discuss Trade Cycle Intelligence. The integration combined customer and vehicle signals with VINCUE workflows to identify possible trade or upgrade opportunities in the service lane. The plan included personalized outreach through Benjamin, VINCUE’s AI agent. A service appointment could become part of a longer vehicle ownership conversation.
Hoke’s own public explanation of the Buy Center PRO collaboration is especially instructive. He described Paragon Honda’s Jeyson Feliz bringing a challenge to VINCUE, Team Velocity, Spyne and OfferLogix. Hoke emphasized alignment between providers, open interfaces and responsible handling of data. “The hard part is alignment,” he wrote. Coming from a CEO who also holds the technology job, that is a useful admission. Some difficult engineering meetings begin with people, rather than code.
Eleven agents, and a familiar question
On October 8, 2026, VINCUE introduced Protos and Protos Intelligence, describing a new platform foundation with eleven AI agents spanning planning, buying, inventory management and selling. The announced Morning Report gathers findings by agent so that a dealer can review vehicles needing attention and assign work from the same page.
The rollout began with a launch program for the first 100 dealership rooftops, with priority access to support and development during their first 90 days. The product announcement scheduled wider availability for February. The shape of the release is familiar: put software in front of dealers, find out where their working day resists it, then use that experience to improve the next version.
It also raises the stakes of Hoke’s old concern with usefulness. More automated findings mean more opportunities to help a manager, and more reasons to make the reasoning understandable. The founder who once helped gather inventory information into a dashboard is now overseeing tools meant to organize attention itself. Whether that saves time will be decided in stores, one decision after another.
A different sort of horsepower
Away from the software, Hoke enjoys American-made muscle cars at the Kansas City Speedway. He and his family call Kansas City home, and one of his children works alongside him at VINCUE. Those details give the executive titles a little texture: the car interest extends beyond inventory records, and the business includes a family connection inside the working day.
There is a pleasing tension between the two forms of horsepower. At the track, the machine is the attraction. At work, much of the effort goes into making a complicated machine less demanding of the person using it. The shared pleasure may simply be getting something to work well. The public record leaves enough room to enjoy the parallel without turning a hobby into a management theory.
Hoke’s career has kept returning to that practical standard. Bring the technical people close to the operators. Give customers a route into product decisions. Improve the handoffs. Leave room for an unexpected proposal. He has built a company around making the dealership’s day more orderly, while accepting that the next improvement may arrive looking slightly out of order.