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 an impressive group of Internet professionals and business experts have pitched in to help make this dream a reality using the latest technologies available. Particularly important contributions came from Internet developer Amy Lee, who served as the company's CTO during its early design phase and continues to serve on the Technology Advisory Board, and Jim Jordan, an autobody veteran with 30 years of industry experience, who helped to organize the private beta and provided domain knowledge necessary to optimize the system 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. Evidently, a similar concept was tested in 2003 in Los Angeles called "DingIT" - but it was discontinued early on, ahead of its time. DentBetty has been recognized for being first to launch a scalable consumer-facing body repair Internet marketplace for today's mobile phone generation (a direct competitor launched only 2 weeks later), and released the second version of this technology on May 6, 2010. The next major iteration of the service is expected in early 2011. It is inevitable that 21st century digital communications technologies will have a tremendous impact on consumer behavior and the rates and structure of the entire automotive insurance industry.

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DentBetty Inside and Out