In a candid appearance on the Raw & Unscripted: KSU Podcast, LeadVenture President and CEO Tim MacDonald addressed service failures, infrastructure investments, and the strategic priorities Dealer Spike is executing in 2026.
There aren’t many CEOs in this industry who will sit across from two powersports veterans — one of whom has publicly criticized their company — and acknowledge, on the record, that the business fell short. Tim MacDonald did exactly that.
In a March 2026 episode of Raw & Unscripted: KSU, hosted by Mark Sheffield and Kyle Reid, President and CEO Tim MacDonald discussed Dealer Spike’s service challenges, its current strategic reset, and the company’s product and technology direction. The full interview is available on YouTube and is worth listening to in full.
Acknowledged Gaps
MacDonald spoke directly about challenges across the prior 18 months: organizational restructuring that disrupted service continuity, slow response times, and a product roadmap that had prioritized new feature development over improving existing functionality.
“I would have focused less on developing new products and more on making it much easier to use what we already had.”
— Tim MacDonald, LeadVenture President & CEO
The company reports hiring approximately 300 people since mid-2024 to rebuild support and account management capacity. According to MacDonald, turnaround times are improving, and account management consistency is stabilizing. A formal relaunch — including public commitments on responsiveness and uptime — is planned for Q3 2026. MacDonald stated that no commitments will be announced until the company is confident it can meet them.
Reduced Scope, Deeper Execution
Input collected from 20 dealer groups and advisory councils has consistently pointed to the same priority: improve what exists before adding to it. In 2025, Dealer Spike shipped approximately 15 new products; in 2026, that number is expected to be one or two. The majority of engineering and product resources are being redirected toward ease of use, support speed, and account management consistency.
Current Deployments
Several AI-based tools are currently live or in active development. An internal AI triage system pre-diagnoses technical support cases prior to human review, which the company reports has meaningfully reduced resolution time. An AI-powered inventory matching tool has achieved approximately a 95% automatic match rate against OEM data, reducing manual unit entry.
A third tool — an AI Product Expert widget, currently available to dealers at no cost — allows consumers to ask detailed questions about vehicles directly on a dealership’s website, keeping shoppers engaged without leaving the page.
MacDonald also described a longer-term roadmap in which AI agents are deployed on a per-dealer basis to proactively audit configurations and surface potential issues before they require a support call.
Dealer & OEM Relationships: Data Protection Policy
Dealer Spike’s platform supports more than 300 OEMs across inventory management, syndication, co-op eligibility, SEO, and digital marketing. The company’s internal data indicates that 40% of dealers who cancel ultimately return — a figure MacDonald referenced as evidence of the platform’s functional depth relative to alternatives.
On data sharing, MacDonald drew a clear and unambiguous line: dealer data will not be shared with OEMs without explicit dealer consent. On the broader question of OEM relationships, he was equally direct:
I will tell any OEM we meet we are never going to do anything that doesn’t also benefit the dealers, and we are certainly never going to do anything that would in any way, shape, or form possibly hurt the dealers.
— Tim MacDonald
You can go fast alone, or you can go far together.
— Tim MacDonald, closing statement, Raw & Unscripted KSU