First Dollar Raises $5M in Seed Funding

First Dollar, an Austin, Texas-based human-centric health care savings platform, closed a seed funding round of $5M.

The round was led by Next Coast Ventures with participation from Meridian Street Capital.

Backers included former athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Everlywell CEO Julia Cheek, Bright Health CTO Brian Gambs and Capital Factory.

The company intends to use the funds to recruit a top team of engineers and designers to scale the HSA offering and build new functionality for its platform.

Co-founded in October 2019 by Jason Bornhorst and Colin Anawaty, First Dollar provides a platform for people to save for out-of-pocket expenses and find health care for a fair price. The company targets Millennials and Gen Z, a generally healthy population that typically spends too much per year for more coverage than they need.

Source. FinSMEs, May 6, 2020

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Talage Raises $5M in Funding

Talage, a Reno, Nev.-based digital insurance platform, closed a $5m Series A funding.

The round was led by Merus Capital, with participation from Calibrate Ventures, WTI and Hallador Investment Advisors

The company intends to use the new funds to scale its engineering and business development teams.

Founded in 2015 by Adam Kiefer, Matt Donovan and Zachary Draper, Talage provides a SaaS based platform enables small business owners to purchase essential commercial coverage from agents online. The platform is now live across the country, having sold over $1 million in insurance coverage to businesses in over 40 states via its solution. The company’s 12 carrier partnerships allow agents to instantly sell coverage under their licenses and appointments via any digital channel.

Source, FinSMEs, February 14, 2020

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

HealthCare.com Secures $18M in Series B Funding

HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding.

The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and CNO Financial Group.

The company intends to use the capital to fund technology, engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its proprietary insurance products.

Founded in 2014 by Howard Yeh, Jeff Smedsrud and Jose Vargas, HealthCare.com is an online health insurance company providing a data-driven shopping platform for American consumers to enroll in individual health insurance and Medicare plans. The company also develops and markets a portfolio of proprietary, direct-to-consumer health insurance and supplemental insurance products under the name Pivot Health.

Source. FinSMEs. November 11, 2019

***

 This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Next Insurance Raises $250M in Series C Funding

Next Insurance, a Palo Alto, CA-based digital Insurtech company focused on small business insurance, raised $250m in Series C funding.

Munich Re provided the funding in a round that brought total funding to $381m in over three years, with a valuation of over $1 billion USD.

The company intends to use the funds for new product development as it scales its small business insurance products, to accelerate its customer expansion initiatives.

continued below

__________________________________________________________

Sponsor

myCareBase™is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.

To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.

__________________________________________________________

Led by Guy Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, Next Insurance provides digital small business insurance coverage across the US by enabling customers businesses to acquire all P&C insurance products in one place and at any time. This includes, general liability, professional liability, commercial auto and, as of today, workers’ compensation coverage.

The company provides insurance coverage to over 1,000 unique types of business with policies that are tailored to their needs.
Benefits also include the Live Certificate, a real-time certificate of insurance verification and access to an online portal where policyholders can add additional insureds, update policy or payment information, send verifiable proof of insurance, and more, all from a smartphone or computer.

Most recently, Next Insurance launched Next for Agents, a platform that enables customers to purchase Next Insurance policies through an agent.

Source. FinSMEs, September 7, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

DeadHappy, the UK pay-as-you-go life insurance provider, raises £4M Series A

DeadHappy, a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Backing comes from e.ventures, alongside the company’s seed investor Octopus Ventures.

Founded in 2017, DeadHappy claims to be the U.K.’s “first fully digital pay-as-you-go life insurance provider.” It offers flexible life insurance policies that are designed to be “cheaper, easier and better” than existing traditional providers. This includes pricing insurance based on your current circumstances and the option to add (or remove) further coverage on a rolling basis.

More broadly, the startup is developing what it calls its “Deathwish” platform, which is something akin to a will. The idea is that you can specify how you wish any future insurance payout to be used, such as paying off your mortgage. And there are also plans to incorporate other wishes not related to finances.

“Our vision is to change attitudes to death and we are tackling that in a number of ways,” DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler tells me. “Despite death being the one certainty humans face, it remains for many a taboo subject, and the failure to talk about it and plan for it is both counterintuitive and leads to significant further trauma at the most difficult of times for family and loved ones.”

Currently the Deathwish platform offers financially motivated Deathwishes, but the longer-term plan is to enable practical Deathwishes, such as making sure your funeral is the way you want it, and what Zeidler calls emotionally motivated Deathwishes.

The idea is to help offer a way to help loved ones “achieve something meaningful in their lives, whether that’s learning how to play the drums or funding an expedition to the Amazon,” he explains.

“Crucially, customers can share these Deathwishes as they choose, which is a practical tool to ensure their wishes are clear and understood. Our platform acts as a catalyst for opening a conversation with loved ones and a place to share recorded video messages and stories.”

Meanwhile, DeadHappy says it will use the new funding for future growth by further building the technology and capabilities of its Deathwish platform. It also plans to expand its product and partnership offerings to major financial service distributors.

Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear, September 27, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Ethos Raises $60M Led by GV to Bring Modern Life Insurance to Millions of Families

SAN FRANCISCO, August 27, 2019 — Ethos, the company making simple, ethical life insurance, today announced it raised a $60 million Series C financing led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). This financing follows major revenue and customer growth, and supports Ethos’ mission to make life insurance coverage accessible for millions of families in the U.S. In addition to GV, Goldman Sachs is a new participant alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital and Accel, bringing the total funding to-date to more than $100 million.

The traditional life insurance application model hasn’t meaningfully evolved in 150 years. The historical application process is long, complex, and invasive – often requiring medical exams and weeks of paperwork. The ubiquitous practice of employing commissioned insurance agents can mean agents are incentivized to make a sale, not to find the policy that is right for the individual. Incentives are fundamentally misaligned. These outdated practices are one reason a massive coverage gap exists in the U.S. Seventy percent of Americans consider life insurance a necessity, yet 41 percent have no coverage at all.

Ethos was founded on the radical idea that everyone deserves access to ethically designed, easy-to-understand term life insurance policies tailored to fit people’s lives. Ethos is a pioneer in using predictive analytics and sophisticated data technologies to eliminate the traditional barriers keeping people from getting coverage. The result is an application process that takes minutes instead of weeks, no medical exams for most applicants, no commissioned agents, and a life insurance company that prioritizes people over profit.

“Since our original investment in Ethos last year, we’ve been consistently impressed by the company’s commitment to growth, customer traction, and execution to date,” said Tyson Clark, General Partner at GV. “With the company’s product differentiation and singular approach to modern life insurance, Ethos is well-positioned to disrupt a $100+ billion industry.”

This latest round of financing comes after significant company growth. Ethos has quadrupled revenue since October 2018 and announced several integral leadership hires, including Head of Finance David Zhang and VP of Insurance Phil Murphy. The company is also driving increased customer acquisition, insuring thousands of new families. The Series C funding will fuel continued momentum, supporting product refinement, technical team hires, and ultimately, the ability to protect more families.

“Getting life insurance is one of the most selfless financial choices someone can make. You shouldn’t have to endure what’s essentially a medical and financial strip search in order to protect your family,” said Peter Colis, Ethos CEO and Co-Founder. "What makes Ethos different from other providers is our core values are aligned with the expectations of American families: life insurance should be easy and ethical. We aren't motivated by capitalizing on individuals. Instead, we make choices like right-sizing policies for customers, so they have the best coverage for their families without ever paying more than they should.”

ABOUT ETHOS

Ethos is a new kind of life insurance, designed to give millions of families access to ethical, modern coverage. Ethos uses predictive analytics and sophisticated data technology to eliminate traditional barriers to life insurance. The application process takes minutes instead of weeks, there no medical exams for most applicants, and no commissioned agents. The result is a life insurance company that prioritizes people over profit. Ethos is backed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Sequoia Capital, Accel, Goldman Sachs, Stanford University and Arrive, a subsidiary of Roc Nation. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. To learn more, visit www.ethoslife.com.

Source. Ethos, News Release, August 27, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Snapsheet Raised $29m in Series E Funding

Snapsheet, a Chicago, IL-based provider of virtual claims solutions, raised $29m in Series E funding.

The round, which brought total funding to $71m, was led by Tola Capital, with participation from new investors Nationwide, Sedgwick, and State Auto Labs and existing investors Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, F-Prime Capital, OCA Ventures and an affiliate of USAA.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the delivery of its SaaS claims platform for all lines of property and casualty, further invest in advanced analytics capabilities and expand the team to serve clients globally.

Led by Jamie Yoder, president, and Brad Weisberg, CEO and founder, Snapsheet delivers a customer-first claims process with an intelligent, proprietary platform combining technology, data and people.

The company, which proactively leverages internal and external data to make every interaction in the claims journey efficient, currently serves more than 75 clients around the world.

Source. FinSMEs, May 20, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax

Breath Life Raises $4.5M in Funding to Address the Insurance Market

By Isabelle Kirkwood

Montreal insurtech startup Breathe Life, which offers consumer-centric digital solutions for the insurance industry, announced the availability of its ​Consumer-Driven Module​, a white-label B2C solution, that helps carriers and agencies sell direct to consumer online while providing an engaging buying experience.

​A report from Accenture​ estimates the resulting life insurance gap to be around $12 trillion for American middle market customers, with $12 billion in new revenue to be gained by simply serving them. Breathe Life’s Consumer-Driven Module was designed to help the insurance industry bring financial security to millions of customers in the middle market that are currently underserved, since it takes the same amount of effort to write a small policy with small profit margins as it does to write a large policy with large margins.

“The Breathe Life Consumer-Driven Module is designed to do the heavy lifting of targeting qualified prospects, making it easy for them to do business with you online,” said Ian Jeffrey, co-founder and CEO at Breathe Life. “At the same time, the solution keeps agents available throughout the process to help answer questions, add value to the online experience and even close sales at a distance through its omni-channel features.”

He stated that by reducing the cost of customer acquisition, Breathe Life enables the insurance industry to make financial security accessible to more people.

Breathe Life provides life and health insurers, distribution organizations, and advisors with white-label solutions to “quickly and cost-effectively” onboard new clients. It provides clients a way to find life insurance without going to a broker. The ​Consumer-Driven Module​ marks the first product Breathe Life has brought to market since it was founded by ​Arach Tchoupani​, ​Jean-Nicholas Hould​, ​Sébastien Malherbe​, and Ian Jeffrey in January 2018​.

The new module offers a suite of tools, the first being an online application and quoting system for multiple insurance products, the second is a set of omni-channel engagement tools​, and digital marketing insights, including analytics and marketing tools​ that helps providers of all sizes to reach target audiences across multiple channels.

The solution aims to deliver a cost-effective solution for carriers and agencies to digitize and pursue new customer segments, reduce costs with digital acquisition and distribution, and open new market opportunities with custom-branded digital tools.

In February, Breathe Life raised $4.5 million CAD in a seed round of equity funding from ​Diagram Ventures​, ​Real Ventures​ and other angel investors. In December, National Bank Insurance also announced a partnership with Breathe Life to develop direct online life insurance distribution solutions.The company is looking to expand its team, which sat at 20 people in February, to at least 30 by the end of the year.

Source. Betakit, Isabelle Kirkwood,  May 13, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Israeli drone insurance startup VOOM raises $5 million

By Andrii Degeler

Tel Aviv-based “specialised mobility” insurance startup VOOM has landed $5 million in a funding round led by Arbor Ventures with participation from F2 Capital, Verizon Ventures, Kaedan Capital, and Plug and Play Ventures. This capital injection brings the total amount raised by the company to $7 million.

VOOM, which also incorporates SkyWatch.AI, offers insurance products for drones and “on-demand insurance for episodic usage mobility including e-scooters, powersports, motor boats, small planes, and other modes of transport,” the startup said in a press release.

The startup uses the telemetry-based risk analysis engine developed by SkyWatch.AI for commercial drones. VOOM’s platform collects mobility data points to provide real-time risk assessment in order to customise insurance policies.

“With the rise of on-demand mobility services such as e-scooters, we discovered that in most cases, riders are not covered in case of an accident,” said Tomer Kashi, CEO and Co-Founder of VOOM. “And much more importantly, they are not aware of this fact. VOOM will ensure that users of unique mobility platforms can grab insurance on-the-go from their mobile devices whether they ride, fly, or sail.”

Source. Tech.EU, Andrii Degeler, May 22nd, 2019.

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Urban Jungle raises £2.5M to make insurance accessible to ‘generation rent’

By Steve O'Hear

Urban Jungle, a digital insurance startup targeting so-called “generation rent” with a range of insurance products, has raised £2.5 million in a seed funding round.

The round is said to be backed by a mixture of new and previous investors, including Rob Devey, the former CEO of Prudential UK, and Simon Rogerson, CEO of Octopus Group.

Described as challenging traditional insurance providers by catering to U.K. renters who have historically been underserved by the insurance industry, Urban Jungle offers contents insurance, gadget insurance and tenant-liability policies.

This includes a contents insurance product focused on house and flat sharers. The startup also offers a pay-as-you-go policy, and says it is committed to transparent pricing policy terms.

“We are fixing home insurance, which has a load of problems to work on,” says Urban Jungle co-founder Jimmy Williams. “Of all of the types of personal insurance, it’s still the one most bought and managed offline, mostly through estate agents, banks and mortgage brokers. Prices are high, terms are complex and there are fees for everything.”

Alongside this, Williams says customers are often asked far too many questions about things that are outside their control, which they resent, and are becoming increasingly aware of outdated and unfair pricing. “Much of this is caused by insurers’ inability to use new sources of data appropriately,” he adds.

In contrast, Urban Jungle aims to be cheaper and easier for customers to buy, manage and claim. It also wants to provide cover better suited to customers’ needs.

“All of this is enabled through technology,” says Williams. “We automate the vast majority of processes to make things super quick, and keep our costs very low. We also use data in smart ways to customise the cover we offer to customers, and make pricing fairer.”

To that end, Urban Jungle claims 15,000 plus customers and says it’s growing more than 30% per month. Meanwhile, today’s newly disclosed funding brings the total raised by the U.K. company to £3.7 million to date.

Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear, May 6, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Reali Raises Additional $9M in Series B2 Funding

Reali, a San Mateo, CA-based real estate technology company focused on home-buying and selling, raised a Series B2 round of $9m.

The round, which added to the initial round of $20m first announced in July 2018, was led by Group 11 (f.k.a SGVC) with participation from existing investors Zeev Ventures and Signia Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to add services such as escrow and title, home warranties and insurance, etc., and continue to recruit key hires across the product, engineering, real estate and marketing teams in the United States and Israel and is expanding its certified agent headcount.

Led by Amit Haller, co-founder and CEO, Reali is a full-service brokerage which leverages a team of local licensed real estate agents, an app, and technology-driven tools to offer cash back to buyers instead of commission, and cash savings to sellers thanks to flat seller fees.

This latest financing follows a rapid growth year for the company where it has more than tripled its transaction volume and has grown its headcount by nearly 40%. Further accelerating its full stack solution on top of new lending capabilities, Reali launched Reali Loans with the acquisition of online mortgage platform Lenda in April 2019.

Source. FinSMEs, Staff, May 9, 2019

 ***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.