Q1 2021 Highest Signal Insurtech Startups
From embedded insurance to new-age D&O, see which startups are raising from the top investors!
Welcome to The Future State: Insurance where we profile the startups rewriting the future of insurance. If you like what you read, subscribe here:
Q1 was a huge quarter for insurtech – globally, insurtech startups raised $3b across 123 rounds. At the Future State, we’re dedicated to figuring out and understanding which startups are shaping the insurance industry, however, in private markets – where startups often don’t report their results – how do you figure out which startups have the edge?
In this post, we surface the highest signal startups by Investor Signal. Outside of looking at the sheer amount of capital raised, at the Future State, we navigate the opaque waters of private markets through VC signal. Are the startups rising from selective investors, who have historically backed successful startups?
Below, you’ll find the ranked highest signal rounds by stage – from later-stage startups like Zego tackling commercial motorbike insurance to early-stage startups like Wrapbook taking an embedded approach for entertaining production insurance.
For the full Q1 2021 list, we've scored and ranked 133 startups, which is available to subscribers. In the sheet, you’ll find the startups ranked by their Q1 score along with supplemental information (headquarters, URLs).
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A quick note on our methodology:
When analyzing private markets, we look where historically selective and successful VCs are placing their bets – we do that with our Investor Signal Score. When we’ve scored each investor, we can then score each startup’s cap table. At the early stages, a high score can signal team strength. At later stages, a high score can signal product-market fit and/or traction.
The Investor Signal Score assesses an investor’s historical success weighted based on the risk profile of each specific round. The three primary drivers of the score are: (1) exit price, (2) the stage of the investment (the earlier the stage, the higher the weight), and (3) whether or not the VC led the round.
In other words, if you’ve led a seed round that has gone on to exit, you’ll get a higher weighting than the non-leads in the same seed round and, say, the Series D investors.
From there, we’re able to rank funding rounds and full cap tables using weighted averages. For the full breakdown of our score, read this post.
We realize that comparing Seed to Series D startups is like comparing apples to oranges. Below, we rank the top 5 insurtech startups by their Q1 round scores, segmented by stage. While the Q1 round doesn’t reflect the entire cap table, we use the high signal rounds as indicative of high signal cap tables.
These scores help us plan our next round of profiles!
Note: the below list is global and raised amounts are denominated in USD.
Series C and Above
#1 – SecurityScorecard, $180m Series E led by Silver Lake Waterman (USA)
With SecurityScorecard think FICO score meets cybersecurity. SecurityScorecard provides cyber-ratings for enterprises. SecurityScorecard's features are used for self-monitoring, third-party risk management, and perhaps most interestingly cyber insurance underwriting.
#2 – Coalition, $175m Series D led by Index Ventures (USA)
Building on the cyber theme, Coalition, operating as an MGA, provides cybersecurity services with cyber insurance embedded into its offering.
#3 – Clark, $83m Series C led by Tencent (Germany)
Clark is an insurance management app that enables users to centralize all their insurance policies. The app acts as a digital brokerage, enabling users to purchase policies directly in the app.
#4 – Zego, $150m Series C led by DST Global and General Catalyst (U.K.)
Zego provides commercial insurance products for enterprise (micromobility) fleets and private hire couriers (i.e. independent delivery professionals). They insure cars, scooters, and e-bikes used for delivery purposes.
#5 – Groundspeed Analytics, Undisclosed Series C led by Insight Partners (USA)
Groundspeed Analytics is an AI-based platform that automates processes for commercial insurers. The platform, for example, helps insurers optimize submission processes and enable underwriters to extract insights from unstructured data. Lower 👏 That 👏 Expense 👏 Ratio.
Series B
#1 – Hi Marley, $25m Series B led by Emergence (USA)
Hi Marley is pushing forward insurance customer service with its SMS platform –– enabling insurers to interact directly with customers during the claims, underwriting, and general FAQ processes. Interacting with your carrier should be easy. Insurers would love ways to boost their retention.
#2 – Idelic, $20m led by Highland Capital Partners (USA)
Idelic consolidates 3rd party fleet systems into one centralized system, aggregating that data in efforts to predict and prevent crashes. Idelic's scores help plug into underwriting systems for more confident fleet insurance.
#3 – Leaselock, $52m Series B led by Westerly Winds and Wildcat Venture Partners (USA)
Leaselock eliminates the need for security deposits with an insurance-like product (in reality, it's a surety bond). Leaselock helps financially burdened renters gain access to housing while helping property owners increase their NOI.
#4 – Aclaimant, $15m Series B led by Next Coast Ventures (USA)
Aclaimant helps businesses manage and resolve workplace incidents. Aclaimant streamlines incident submission and claims filing (all compliant with OSHA requirements) and provides analytics on claims activity. Workers comp is a complex area that requires numerous stakeholders and Aclaimant is seeking to sit at the center of that ecosystem.
#5 – Alice, $33.3m Series B led by ThornTree Capital Partners (Brazil)
Alice is a Brazilian-based B2C health insurance provider that also provides primary care services (both in-person and tele-health solutions).
Series A
#1 – Wrapbook, $27m Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz (USA)
Wrapbook is walking into the insurance industry through the sidedoor. It's platform helps the entertainment manage production payroll and equipment needs. But most interestingly, it embeds both production (general liability, equipment rental insurance) and workers comp insurance into the platform. If you've read one article insurance article over the past few months, you've probably read the words "embedded insurance" and this is a prototypical example!
#2 – Counterpart, $10m Series A led by Valor Equity Partners (USA)
Counterpart is reimagining management liability insurance (D&O, employment practices, fiduciary). Counterpart is up against big hitting startups such as Next Insurance, which raised its own $250m round this quarter.
#3 – Briza.io, $8m Series A led by Investment Group of Santa Barbara (Canada)
Briza.io is a Canadian-based startup providing insurance-as-a-service with its API that enables businesses sell commercial insurance with a few lines of code. Think Boost Insurance, but for the Canadian market.
#4 – Nayya , $11m Series A led by Felicis Ventures (USA)
Nayya provides personalized enrollment guidance for employee benefits, seeking to educate employees and promote engagement with the various benefits programs at their disposal.
#5 – Pawlicy Advisor, $6.5m Series A led by Defy.vc and Rho Capital Partners (USA)
Pawlicy Advisor is a pet insurance brokerage. While pet insurance quickly became a staple over the past few years, the aggregators (digital brokerages) have not caught up with the development.
Seed (and Pre-Seed)
#1 – Avenews, $3.2m Seed led by XT Hi-Tech (Israel)
Avenews is providing the financial infrastructure for agricultural businesses. It's seeking to be a centralized platform for onboarding suppliers and customers, digitizing their customers' supply chains in the process. From there, Avenews seeks to embed financial services (such as loans and insurance) directly into the platform.
#2 – Bimaplan, $500k Seed led by Titan Capital (India)
Bimaplan is an Indian company (funded by Y Combinator) that seeks to replace insurance agents with an app-based product, in an effort to sell low-priced insurance products.
#3 – Joshu, $3.7m Seed led by Blumberg Capital (USA)
Joshu is building the rails to enable large insurance carriers quickly digitize and sell their insurance products online.
#4 – Cerebrae, Undisclosed Seed from Susa Ventures (USA)
Cerebrae is an actuarial analytics platform seeking to help solve operational risk problems in the U.S. healthcare industry by assessing metrics such as clinical costs and utilization.
#5 – Surround Insurance, $2.6m Seed from Sure Ventures and Plug & Play (USA)
Surround Insurance is building insurance products directly marketed at urban professionals. Surround offers an umbrella policy with coverages unique to young urban professionals such as: driver's insurance (for rentals), renter's insurance, and professional liability (for freelancers).
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Note: This analysis was run using Crunchbase data.
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In case you missed our previous posts:
Upcoming Posts (released every other week, in order):
Hover on how 3D modeling prompted new use cases for insurance carriers. Hover has raised $127.3m from VCs such as GV and Menlo Ventures, as well as, CVCs such as Nationwide, State Farm Ventures, and Travelers Insurance.
Wrapbook on embedding entertainment production insurance and workers comp into payroll software. Wrapbook is the top ranked Series A companies by our Investor Signal score, having raised a $27m round led by a16z.
Corvus Insurance on using AI to better underwrite commercial cyber, E&O, and cargo insurance. Corvus ranked #6 among Series C and later startups. Corvus recently raised a $100m Series C from Insight Partners.
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Have any other questions, comments, or feedback? My email is harry@radicleinsights.com. Please reach out 🙏. Would love to hear your thoughts!