Press kit

Zach Klempf is a keynote speaker, exited SaaS founder and host of the Used Car Dealer Podcast. He got into the car business at 19, selling cars part-time while studying at Emory University. What stuck with him was not the sales floor but the back office: independent dealers were running million-dollar businesses on paper, spreadsheets and software built for someone else.

At 23 he founded Selly Automotive to fix that, building a mobile-first CRM and texting platform for independent and buy-here-pay-here dealers. He cold-called the first hundred customers himself, went through the Blue Startups accelerator, and spent nine years on the road at trade shows and dealer conventions. Selly grew to hundreds of dealerships across North America.

In 2022, Selly joined AutoManager, backed by New York private equity firm The Beekman Group, in a multi-million dollar transaction. Zach rolled his equity into the combined company, where he serves as Chief Strategy Officer and a board member.

Today Zach is one of the auto retail industry’s most visible voices on technology. He has keynoted more than 25 conferences, from national dealer associations to SaaS and startup stages, and has more than 100 articles and features across Forbes, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance and the trade press. His talks focus on what AI really changes inside the dealership, how younger buyers shop, and the playbook for building vertical software that wins.

On the Used Car Dealer Podcast he has interviewed more than 80 dealers, executives and technologists. Zach lives in San Francisco.