Jeremy Anspach and the value hiding in plain sight

Before Jeremy Anspach built a business around the information attached to a car, there was a car worth remembering: his father’s 1967 Corvette coupe. Marina Blue. A big block engine. Four hundred and thirty-five horsepower. His father bought it before Jeremy was born; in 2016, Anspach said it was still in the family. An inventory database might reduce all that to a few fields. A car enthusiast knows those fields contain a story.

Anspach grew up in Detroit, wanted to drive practically everything, and tried cars ranging from a Honda Civic to a Turbo Porsche. Somewhere between that enthusiasm and the business of shopping, he became dissatisfied with the online experience. The vehicles were interesting. The way they were presented could be considerably less so.

PureCars, which he founded in 2007, grew out of that gap. His career would eventually encompass a $125 million company sale, a book about advertising waste, and an investment firm. The starting question was smaller and more useful: how could a dealer explain what made a particular vehicle worth buying?

A better explanation of a used car

Consider two listings with similar asking prices. One vehicle has had money spent on getting it ready for its next owner. Unless the listing explains that work, the buyer sees a price without much of an argument behind it. For the dealer, effort has disappeared into the screen.

PureCars’ early Value Report addressed that problem by showing information about individual vehicles, including reconditioning work. New tires, brakes and inspections could become part of the online explanation. SmartComments carried vehicle descriptions to inventory listing sites. The ambition was to make the work already done on the car visible to the person considering it.

Anspach had studied marketing at Walsh College. Here was a marketing problem with something unusually concrete underneath it: the product was sitting on a lot. Better language alone would have limited value if the details were wrong. The explanation needed to connect to the actual vehicle.

That distinction helps explain PureCars’ subsequent direction. Once a business can understand inventory in detail, it can use that information beyond a listing page. The same knowledge can help decide what to advertise, to whom, and when. Merchandising supplied the raw material for a larger advertising business.

The budget gets a vote

Growth came with outside investment. In January 2013, PureCars announced $5 million in new equity from Gemini Investors and Stage 1 Ventures. That December, it announced a second $5 million round from the same investors. The product line was expanding, and the company had a clearer proposition for dealers trying to turn online research into showroom business.

SmartAdvertising connected in-stock inventory with a shopper’s online behavior. By the December announcement, hundreds of dealers had piloted it, including Asbury Automotive Group’s then 79 stores. It also received the 2013 Most Innovative Product award at the DrivingSales Executive Summit. These were practical milestones for a company selling software to people who needed cars to leave their lots.

Anspach’s approach to spending was selective. PureCars charged subscriptions from the beginning and operated for years using its founding team’s money. He described a board that kept spending concentrated on necessities, especially data and development. “If we spent anywhere aggressively, it was on the technology side.”

The geography was similarly practical: Charleston, then teams in Atlanta and Milwaukee. The business followed its customers and the people who could build its products. A fashionable startup address would have added remarkably little to a vehicle description.

When television bought the inventory engine

In 2015, Raycom Media acquired PureCars for $125 million. The buyer operated 51 television stations in 38 markets. It already knew the local advertising business; PureCars brought a way to connect that business with shoppers moving between digital screens.

The pairing had an ordinary commercial logic behind its large price. Dealerships were local advertisers with specific stock to sell. Television offered reach. Digital tools offered ways to make the message more relevant to the vehicle someone was considering. PureCars remained a separate unit, with its Atlanta development campus and Charleston and Milwaukee offices.

Raycom executive Joe Fiveash said dealer conversations had repeatedly pointed his team toward PureCars. There is something pleasingly direct about that route to an acquisition. People buying the service recommended the people selling it. Customer relationships had become evidence that a larger media company could act upon.

The work remained unusually specific. In early 2016, PureCars expanded inventory-based retargeting to Facebook. Ads could feature the particular vehicle a shopper had viewed, down to its vehicle identification number. The color, trim and condition mattered. Inventory feeds also allowed the advertising to reflect price changes. In this business, the difference between a model and an actual car was the difference between an appealing suggestion and something a customer could buy.

A founder keeps moving between seats

Anspach’s association with PureCars extended beyond the sale. In 2017, as chairman and founder, he was involved in the next phase as the company acquired certain assets of Showroom Logic, another automotive advertising technology business. The company was adding capabilities within the market it already served.

By early 2019, he was executive chairman. That February, the College of Charleston scheduled him as a speaker for its Make Your Mark series. The university described a business powering digital marketing for more than 3,000 dealers across the country. For students attending the March event, the example of a technology company built in their own city was close at hand.

On March 1, 2020, he returned as CEO. The company revisited its purpose, mission and vision, and later that year introduced a refreshed brand. Its explanation of the business kept returning to a familiar concern: using reliable information to make better advertising decisions and lower the cost of winning business.

That return gives his career a less tidy shape than the standard founding-to-sale arc. He moved between operating and chairman roles, then took the operating job again. Selling the company had changed its ownership. His work with the company continued.

“That tech is nothing without great people.”

Jeremy Anspach, 2016

Giving the waste a name

In June 2021, Anspach published Blind Spots: A Guide to Eliminating Today’s Automotive Digital Media Waste. The title borrowed a familiar driving problem for a less visible business expense. A dealership could be spending money, receiving reports, and still failing to see where the money was going astray.

The book addressed selecting vehicles to promote, choosing audiences and channels, and understanding advertising cost per sale and repair order. It also made room for his own beginnings, including a grandmother who worked on Ford’s assembly line. Cars connected the family story to the business argument.

Rhett Ricart, the 2020 National Automobile Dealers Association chairman and CEO of Ricart Automotive, wrote the foreword. Profits from book sales were pledged to charity. Anspach was trying to put an operating philosophy into a form a dealer could sit down and read.

The distinction between data and useful information was central to the book’s scope. A report can describe activity beautifully while leaving the reader unsure what to do on Monday. A guide promising to reduce waste has to cross that awkward distance between knowing something and changing a decision.

Following the buyer to the payment

PureCars also acquired truPayments in 2021. That brought shopping personalization and financial technology into the company’s offering, including tools for shopping by payment and assessing trade-ins. Advertising could attract a shopper; payment information addressed another part of the decision.

Anspach framed the move around rising customer expectations and the need for dealerships to provide smoother online experiences. The acquisition connected marketing technology with tools intended to make the purchase process more personal and more useful. It extended the company’s attention from what a vehicle was to how a shopper might pay for it.

In June 2022, Anspach announced Stephane Ferri as the new CEO. Looking back, he described the original merchandising vision growing into digital advertising and a company serving thousands of dealers. He was handing over a business with a broader job than the one he had started.

The prediction that stayed with someone

There is a smaller handover story worth keeping beside the transaction figures. Lauren Donalson joined PureCars in account management in 2015. Anspach regularly accompanied her on dealer visits in Boston. Roughly three months into her time at the company, she remembers him saying: “You know you’re going to run this place someday.”

She laughed it off. She also remembered it. In September 2025, Donalson became PureCars’ CEO. By November, she was describing Anspach as a mentor and one of the people whose advice she continued to trust.

The anecdote gives a specific shape to his often stated appreciation for the team. Encouragement can be very cheap when it never names a possibility. This one named the top job. Donalson’s later promotion was her own career achievement, earned across a decade of work; his remark had given her something to carry along the way.

The next business, and the same practical question

Today, Cove Creek Partners lists Anspach as a founder and managing partner. His work there focuses on helping portfolio companies grow through technology, improved processes and operations. Fellow founders include investment executive Kurt Polk and technology entrepreneur Jeremy Todd. Anspach brings the experience of building, financing and selling an operating company.

His stated interests include businesses that incorporate social good into everyday operations. Away from work, he enjoys cycling, triathlons, water sports and time with his wife, Rachel, and their three children. The company-building history sits alongside a life that still includes plenty of movement.

The through line is a practical one. A dealer has information that a buyer cannot see. An advertising budget contains spending that deserves a closer look. A colleague has potential that someone takes the trouble to name. Across those different settings, Anspach’s work has often concerned value that is already present and could be put to better use.

The Corvette was easy to notice. Much of the rest required a more patient look.