Minneapolis-made app aims to be embedded in car touchscreens

In the late spring of 2021, friends Jazz Hampton, Andre Creighton and Mychal Frelix launched TurnSignl, a mobile app that connects auto drivers with lawyers during traffic stops or following an accident.

Three years later, the app has surpassed 100,000 downloads with a network of lawyers in all 50 states and enterprise accounts with institutions such as Children's Minnesota and Morehouse College offering it as a benefit option for employees and students.

The new frontier for TurnSignl, though, is being embedded in car touchscreens by car manufacturers.

"Why wouldn't a car manufacturer say, 'This is the next OnStar'?" Hampton said, referring to OnStar Corp., the subsidiary of General Motors that offers in-vehicle technology for drivers to connect with first responders in an emergency.

So far, the founders of the company have raised about $6 million from investors, including former General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner.

Hampton, who declined to name specific car brands, said he's hoping the TurnSignl app will launch in car dashboards in 2025.

Meanwhile, TurnSignl recently announced a revenue-sharing partnership with Driver Technologies, which sells a co-piloting app that turns a driver's phone into a dash cam. The partnership essentially gives Driver app users access to TurnSignl's attorneys. Using artificial intelligence, the Driver app allows users to video record their trip as well as receive alerts if they become distracted, drowsy or get too close to the car in front of them.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Hampton talked about car touchscreens, the new revenue-sharing partnership and expansion.

Q: Being in the dashboard: How big of a goal is that for the company?

A: That's the next big audacious goal that we want to tackle. We're really hopeful. We've been working on that for two years. It's a goal that we have had since the very beginning, when Dre and Mychal and I first met in a coffee shop to talk about what TurnSignl would be. We put that button in the dashboard and now it's a part of every interaction going forward from the ground up rather than from the top down.

Q: How does the deal with Driver improve the company's chances of becoming a touchscreen app in vehicles?

A: TurnSignl wants to be in the dashboard of vehicles very soon, in the infotainment center. [Driver] has aspirations to continue growing and do more fleet solutions as they are already doing. If you're managing a fleet of 20,000 vehicles and you want everyone to have a dash camera and you want all of your fleets to have access to an attorney, there's one group you should reach out to, and it's this joint offering that can offer you both of those things at a really high level.

Q: Financially, why was it a good decision?

A: At the end of the day, we are both going to be just fine if we're reaching more and more people. This brings in more opportunities to reach more customers. And the other great thing is, whether you were paying for Driver already or TurnSignl already, the joint offering is a great deal. I think for early stage companies, you get in a mind frame of "We need to grow our business and we need to do this in isolation." When you have two organizations that are in a rapid growth phase that can partner together to increase both of your growth at the same time, it's a no-brainer.

Q: Is moving beyond the U.S. on the road map?

A: It's nothing that's going to happen in 2024, but moving to more countries is something that we have a desire to do. Canada is the first logical move. We went through the Alchemist Accelerator in Canada to understand the market. We want to be really intentional when we go to a country, to really understand the landscape of what we're getting into. Our friends in the north are the easiest one, and then Europe would make a lot of sense, especially with partnerships with car manufacturers.