TrueCar

TrueCar, inc, is an automotive game system and information website for people. TrueCar is paid by dealerships. The company gives buyers information on what others have paid for cars, upfront pricing, and access to a network of TrueCar Certified Dealers. TrueCar reports its users have purchased more than 2 million cars from dealers in its network. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and its network includes more than 10,000 new and used automobile dealers across the United States. In November 2015, Chip Perry was named Chief Executive Officer and President.

Technology

TrueCar's "massive up-to-the-minute database of selling prices" is an example of big data at the petabyte level and is run on Apache Hadoop.

History

TrueCar was originally incorporated under the name "Zag.com Inc." in Delaware in February 2005. Scott Painter, along with several co-founders, including Tom Taira and Jim Nguyen operated the business primarily as a provider of “white-labeled” auto-buying programs for affinity groups. Within the Zag.com environment, the concepts of price confidence using data and analytics presented in an easy-to-digest form was incubated and launched in a separate company, TrueCar.com. The TrueCar concept involved gathering data from a number of different sources in order to compile updated vehicle prices for consumers in an attempt to enhance Zag.com's services. Ultimately, the two entities were combined to form TrueCar, Inc.