UW Grad’s Startup Aims to be ‘Operating System’ for Disaster Restoration Contractors

A Wyoming-based startup founded by a 2024 University of Wyoming graduate is venturing that the fragmented, paperwork-heavy world of disaster restoration contracting is ready for an all-in-one software platform -- and that the company built by people who worked the job themselves has an edge.

Plentitude is building what co-founder and CEO Dalton Gregory, of Sheridan, calls "the operating system" for specialty construction and disaster restoration companies, starting with two of the industry's biggest pain points: estimating and insurance claims.

"When I used to do restoration, I had a folder on my phone with about 12 different apps, and each app did one specific thing," Gregory says. "Our goal is to try to centralize all that in one place so you don't have to bounce around and basically have a partial solution."

Gregory and co-founder and CTO Jacob Warthen, a University of San Franciso graduate with expertise in building artificial intelligence and optimization, recently launched the company's web application, Parity. Gregory will discuss his startup at the free 2026 Wyoming Blockchain Stampede Wednesday, Sept. 30, at UW's Wyoming Union.

Gregory says he and Warthen spoke with hundreds of restoration business owners while developing the platform and heard a consistent complaint: Many contractors outsource estimating and claims work to third-party companies that process it by hand. By doing so, Gregory says, those companies hand over their data and the patterns that data reveals.

"The data that they're leveraging is going out of the company and into this contractor, so those patterns, the things that they're learning over time, don't stick with those employees," Gregory says. "What we're doing and what makes us different is that's going to stay with the contractor moving forward. And every claim that we process makes our system smarter."

Because Plentitude works across many companies and insurance carriers rather than a single business, Gregory says the platform can identify patterns across states and carriers that an individual contractor, or a single custom-built app, couldn't see on its own.

Central to Plentitude's pitch is what the restoration industry has come to treat as standard: Contractors routinely get paid less than they invoice, and it can take months or, after major disasters, years to collect.

"It has become a somewhat of a norm inside of the industry to accept anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of your given invoice to be basically cut down," Gregory says.

Payment can take 30 to 120 days under normal circumstances and, after major disasters such as hurricanes, some companies wait far longer.

"We've heard horror stories of companies sitting there two years after they've done the service, still not getting paid," he adds.

Plentitude tracks what it calls a "rejection rate" for each contractor and is working to shrink both the amount left uncollected and the time it takes to get paid, Gregory says. The platform builds what he described as a more "defensible" estimate by referencing industry standards and each insurance carrier's own claims-payment guidelines, aiming to cut down the back-and-forth between contractor and carrier that can otherwise stretch a claim out for weeks.

Plentitude runs on internally built models the company uses to identify patterns and improve estimates over time, Gregory says. The platform is cloud-based, but the company also built a local mobile app, which fully launched in mid-August, for contractors working in places without cell service. It's a problem Gregory says he ran into repeatedly doing restoration work himself.

"We would be in crawl spaces and places where there's no service, and that always tends to be a little bit of a headache because you have to wait until you have service," he says.

For security, Gregory says, Plentitude encrypts data at rest and in transit using 256-bit encryption and uses industry standards. Plentitude has begun an SOC 2 Type II audit, expected to wrap up within about 90 days.

Plentitude incorporated roughly 60 days before this week's web app launch, Gregory says, and landed its first customer even sooner. The company now has several paying customers it describes as central to an ongoing feedback loop shaping new features.

"We know that the competition is not far behind us, and time, velocity and time to execution is really our competitive edge," Gregory says.

The company is headquartered in Wyoming and operates largely remotely. It has applied to accelerator programs in San Francisco and Boulder, Colo., though Gregory says the team hopes to stay close to home where possible. He notes, though, that much of the restoration industry is concentrated in the southern United States due to weather-related disasters.

Nationally, Gregory estimates there are about 62,000 restoration companies, with roughly 20,000 of them the locally owned small businesses that Plentitude is targeting first. He says Plentitude has attended many industry events and showcased the new platform at the Collective by CORE conference in early August.

Gregory traces his interest in the industry to his father's roofing company, where he worked doors for insurance claims on commission starting around age 12. He later studied entrepreneurship and blockchain at UW, where he credits the late Steve Lupien, longtime director of the university's Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation (CBDI), with shaping his path.

"Steve, better than anyone, understood how important entrepreneurship is," Gregory says, recalling how Lupien pushed students in his classes to pitch real business applications of blockchain technology rather than treat it as an abstraction.

"There are so many students that had gone and actually started companies based off the ideas in his class," he adds.

Gregory also credits CBDI visiting instructor Dan Conway, an early mentor in artificial intelligence, as an influence from his time at UW's blockchain center.

Lupien will be honored at the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede during an industry dinner Tuesday, Sept. 29. To attend the dinner and hear Gregory's presentation, preregister at https://www.uwyo.edu/stampede.

While Plentitude is an AI-focused company today, Gregory says blockchain hasn't left the roadmap entirely. He points to the auditability blockchain offers in terms of a ledger and its potential fit with insurance claims and smart contracts as an area the company may explore once its core platform is further along.

"I definitely think it's top of mind," he says.