About Openbay

Openbay is car repair for today's world. Vehicles symbolize independence, yet when they break, many drivers still feel powerless when searching for a good mechanic. Openbay empowers its members by delivering repair quotes from shops nearby, combined with an easy-to-use platform to schedule and pay for service. Hours spent researching local car repair, hoping to find an honest mechanic is a thing of the past.
Openbay provides a new sense of comfort as it relates to car repair. From recommending local shops, to secure payment processing and tracking of services online; Openbay gets drivers back on the road with peace-of-mind. Openbay is headquartered in Cambridge, MA.

About Our Executive Team

Rob Infantino, founder & CEO of Openbay

Rob is the founder and CEO of Openbay. He was inspired to start the company after an automotive service center attempted to overcharge him for unnecessary repairs. Prior to Openbay, Rob founded three enterprise software companies. He has always enjoyed working on his own cars, performing everything from transmission replacements to engine rebuilds, and has spent time working in a pit crew on modified stock cars. Rob holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. A noted authority on vehicle repair, interviews with Rob have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, BBC Autos, Boston Globe, and NY Daily News, among others.

Adam Bair, CTO

Adam Bair is Openbay’s first hire, having joined in April 2013 as CTO to build its web app and mobile app, using Ruby on Rails, and to recruit and manage its growing team of developers. Adam joined Openbay from Democracy Now, where he worked as software developer. Prior to that, Adam was with Intridea, a web product and consulting firm, where he started as one of its first employees, then rose through the ranks to become partner and director of development, growing and overseeing its team of developers. He also worked as software engineer at Revolution Health, building large-scale applications used by millions of people each month. Adam is founder of Hackon, a software development company. He majored in computer science at the University of Southern Maine's honors program.

Ashley Halverson, vice president of marketing

Ashley leads multi-channel customer acquisition and retention efforts. Prior to joining Openbay, Ashley spent the past 3 years with Goji, an auto-insurance comparison website, most recently as its VP of Marketing, managing channel expansion efforts including strategic partnerships rebranding campaigns. Prior to Goji, Ashley has held previous marketing and analytics roles at Freedom Disability, a national social security disability advocacy group, and Mayo Clinic Health Systems. Ashley has a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Valentine Oldham, public relations

Valentine has led Openbay’s public relations efforts since March 2014. Since then, Openbay has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, ABC World News Tonight, FOX & Friends and Yahoo!, among other outlets. Prior to joining Openbay, Valentine had spent her PR career working for automakers Mercedes-Benz USA and Bentley Motors, Inc. Most recently, she was director of public relations for AOL's automotive and women’s lifestyle verticals. Valentine has a bachelor's degree in communications from Boston University.

Kevin Osborne, vice president of customer development

Kevin leads the member services team to develop and support its service provider network and vehicle owners. Prior to Openbay, Kevin spent five years working at AOL, most recently as a regional sales manager overseeing two consecutive years of growth in both endemic display and the ad network sales business. Prior to AOL, Kevin worked at Citysearch as a senior account executive and OC101 Enterprise as its director of sales. Kevin has a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Bentley University and a master’s degree in business administration from Babson College.

David Vallance, vice president of product

David joins Openbay as VP of product, overseeing its web and mobile platforms. Prior to joining Openbay, David was the director of deployment engineering at Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon), leading the first integrated mobile robotic systems for Amazon ecommerce fulfillment centers, and developing the Technical Account Management and Configuration and Integration teams. Prior to Kiva, David spent ten years at Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) in a progression of roles, ultimately overseeing program-, product-, and engineering-management, operations, data, web architecture, and professional services. David has a bachelor's degree in marketing from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a high-tech master's degree in business administration from Northeastern University.

"Ah-hah!" - The Moment That Started Our Story

The genesis of Openbay arose from a personal event after our founder and CEO, Rob, brought his car to a service center for a simple wheel alignment, an inexpensive service – it should have been less than $200. After sipping a coffee and munching on a few treats, the service advisor came to Rob with a 12-page estimate of repairs they believed needed to be done on his car before they could perform the wheel alignment. It amounted to $4,000. Rob felt unsure of the estimate and supposed repairs needed, so declined and left without any service performed on the car.

That night, Rob went home and searched online for one site where he could find local, trustworthy mechanics, that would provide high quality service at a fair price. But he couldn't find anything. That was the genesis of Openbay - an online marketplace that allowed customers to compare quotes, read customer reviews, and book service with repair shops that provide high-quality service in their neighborhoods. That was the initial vision and it hasn’t changed since the company's inception.