Celebrating Seven Years at Snapsheet

Nowadays, staying at a company for seven years is rare, especially in tech. That’s why we’re incredibly proud to chat with Bryan Quastoff, head of partnerships and Mark Santefort, vice president of operations about their most memorable experiences over these past seven years at Snapsheet.

Read on as we gathered their thoughts and experiences on how things have changed within the field of insurance claims and the company itself. And thanks to both our leaders for helping us transform the industry—one claim at a time!  

What was your first role at Snapsheet? 

Mark: I started as an estimator after spending nine years at Progressive and Farmers Insurance.

Bryan: I was originally hired as an estimator, but soon took on a new role as compliance manager as well, responsible for licensing.

What was the industry like when you first got involved/started working at Snapsheet?   

Bryan: When I started at Snapsheet the industry was still relying on the same policies and procedures they’d been following for decades. It was widely believed that someone had to physically put their hands on your car to get an estimate. 

Mark: Going from 100-year-old insurance companies to a 20-person start-up was a liberating experience. I went from a rigid work environment with little change, to one where I was expected to innovate and challenge “normal” on a daily basis. Even with 14+ hour days for much of the first two years, it never felt like work.

What were some of the main challenges back then?

Mark: “Virtual” was just a vague concept for most insurers and completely foreign to the repair facilities. 

Bryan: The biggest challenge was getting the industry to see the value in a virtual appraisal. We worked very closely with shops across the country, helping them understand the benefits and doing what we could to make for a smooth transition.

Mark: We also had to build our processes and systems from scratch. Since then we’ve rebuilt our workflows and systems three or four times and are still working towards improving the process. In a lot of ways this is what really makes Snapsheet special as it forced us to build technology and workflows to fill in all the gaps that the traditional software and service providers could not fill.

In looking back, have you seen many changes in the industry over those years? 

Bryan: The industry has changed immensely during my tenure at Snapsheet, both from a claims perspective as well as the automotive industry as a whole. If you told me 10 years ago that cars could drive themselves, telematics can initiate First Notice of Loss and estimates can nearly write themselves, I would have said you were crazy.

Mark: We’ve clearly gotten past the question of “is virtual possible?” This is evident in the growth of Snapsheet and the fact that some major carriers are building their own platforms. Many carriers and service providers claim they’ll be able to automate estimates in the near future, but they’re still looking at the original estimate as the answer to all their problems. They still ignore the need to evolve and potentially automate all of the manual steps of the claims process that can take days to execute. At Snapsheet we figured out the “virtual estimate” part years ago and we are years ahead of the industry in making the rest of the claims process a “touchless” experience.

From your perspective, what would you say are your greatest accomplishments over the years?

Mark: Over the past seven years we went from being a small start-up to an industry leader, so there are numerous accomplishments we could point to. I’m most proud of our ability to grow leaders from within. Every Technical Lead and Manager here started on the ground level and worked their way up through the organization. We go to great lengths to continually invest in our people and provide them opportunities to develop and grow with Snapsheet.