DentBetty was first conceived on May 16, 2008 by Andrew Mann, one of America's most passionate technology entrepreneurs. Mann had been hard at work on a platform that used digital photography for telemedicine applications, when he looked out at his dented car in his driveway and realized that the same technology could be put to use to create an enormous convenience for car-loving consumers everywhere. And so, armed only with a five page manifesto and $25,000 that he managed to cajole from an old friend, he was off and running.

Since then a group of the world's top computer scientists and business folks including Chief Technology Officer Amy Lee joined in to help make this dream a reality using the latest technologies available. Nine auto body shops in the Bay Area, organized by Jim Jordan, an autobody veteran with 30 years of industry experience, participated in the private beta, actively giving design feedback in order to optimize the system necessary to meet the needs of industry. The first version of DentBetty went live for the public to use on July 4, 2009.

The impact that the internet will have on the $36 billion collision repair industry in the United States cannot be overstated, it is enormous. Before companies like DentBetty, repair estimation was a costly, labor-intensive task for the body shops with very little transparency for consumers. The average shop writes 127 estimates per month and it typically takes the technician 30 minutes to do each one. Meanwhile on DentBetty they can make an estimate in less than 2 minutes without having to make small talk or disrupt their workflow. And for the consumer, the convenience is obvious. Who wants to take time off from work to drive around town to get repair estimates?

Why has it taken so long for this old industry to embrace the internet, while companies like Amazon and eBay emerged years earlier? The DentBetty team thinks it could be because digital cameras with sufficient clarity and detail to make an estimate virtually only became inexpensive and ubiquitous recently. DentBetty has been recognized as the first company to introduce a scalable Internet transaction platform specially designed for this industry and released the second generation of this technology on May 6, 2010. The next major iteration of the service is expected in early 2011. It is inevitable that this revolution will have a tremendous impact on consumer behavior and possibly the rates and structure of the entire automotive insurance industry.

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DentBetty Inside and Out