Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion-stage, start-ups, growth companies, and incubation, and specializes in debt financing for start-ups and growth companies. Lightspeed Venture Partners invests in various sectors that include enterprise, consumer, big data, bitcoin, enterprise technology, cleantech, mobile, internet, financial technology, cloud solutions, e-commerce, storage, media, networking, energy, and software, software-as-a-service, information technology, biotechnology, and social.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Underscore VC is an early-stage, Boston-based venture capital firm backing bold entrepreneurs with an aligned community designed to fit each startup's unique needs.

Underscore VC

Afore Capital backs product-centric founders at the pre-seed stage exclusively. The investment team brings 16 years of founding product experience (Android and Twitter) and 7 years of institutional investing experience (Founder Collective and Foundation Capital). Their sweet spot is the ~$1M pre-seed round, where they can lead the round as an institutional investor alongside high value angels.

Afore Capital

Brewer Lane Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund backing founders transforming the insurance and finance industries. Their investment philosophy is that technology should be used to improve people’s lives, and they partner with founders determined to transform the market for companies and consumers alike.  It was founded in 2019 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Brewer Lane Ventures

Herald

Herald is a digital infrastructure that uses a single API to connect software developers to commercial insurance carriers. Herald's API is used by software developers to obtain quotes from multiple carriers across multiple lines of business, including Workers' Compensation, Business Owners Policy (BOP), and General Liability.

Herald is a digital infrastructure provider for commercial insurance, offering a unified API that connects insurance brokers with carriers. The company's platform is designed to simplify and modernize the insurance industry by streamlining the process of quoting, binding, and issuing insurance products across multiple lines of business. Herald's API integrates with over 60 commercial insurance products from various carriers, covering general liability, workers' compensation, business owner’s policy, cyber insurance, and professional liability.

MGMT Boston

Why We Invested in Herald, Digital Infrastructure for Commercial Insurance

Herald launches the Insurance API Index

InsurTech: Infrastructure

Herald: Commercial Insurance Digital Infrastructure Secures $12 Million (Series A)

Salesforce

To enable real-time commercial insurance connectivity, enabling brokerages to quote, compare, and bind insurance directly within Salesforce's CRM, improving productivity and customer service.

Policy administration systems that focus on managing policy lifecycle activities, including policy issuance, endorsements, renewals, and cancellations. They provide insurers with tools to configure and manage policy rules, coverage options, and premium calculations. Platforms can also have additional functions for commission and performance tracking

Herald is a digital infrastructure provider for the commercial insurance industry, founded in 2021 by Matthew Antoszyk and Duncan Crystal. The company offers a single API that connects software developers to commercial insurance carriers, streamlining the process of obtaining quotes and purchasing policies across multiple lines of business. Herald's API supports over 60 commercial insurance products from 20 different carriers, including workers' compensation, business owners' policy, general liability, and cyber insurance. The company aims to simplify the integration process for brokers and insurtech companies, reducing development time from months to hours. Herald generates revenue through a B2B SaaS model and by capturing transaction costs for policies purchased through their platform. As of June 2023, the company was approaching a seven-figure run rate. Herald's technology addresses the challenges faced by the insurance industry in moving sales online, such as the fragmented market, unreliable existing infrastructure, legacy technology, and regulatory complexity. The company's long-term vision includes expanding its infrastructure to support the entire insurance lifecycle, from quoting and closing to billing and renewals.

Herald is a digital infrastructure provider for commercial insurance, offering a unified API that connects insurance brokers with carriers. The company's platform is designed to simplify and modernize the insurance industry by streamlining the process of quoting, binding, and issuing insurance products across multiple lines of business. Herald's API integrates with over 60 commercial insurance products from various carriers, covering general liability, workers' compensation, business owner’s policy, cyber insurance, and professional liability.Herald’s API facilitates the management of policy lifecycle activities. This API allows brokers to quote and bind insurance policies in real time, integrating with existing broker systems like agency management systems, customer relationship management tools, and custom-built platforms. The system enables efficient configuration and management of policy rules, coverage options, and premium calculations across multiple carriers and products. By providing a single integration point, Herald's platform reduces the time and resources typically required for multiple carrier integrations, allowing brokers to focus on improving customer experiences and expanding their service offerings.Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2024, Herald partnered with Gerent, a Salesforce consulting and implementation partner, to enhance functionality for property and casualty (P&amp;C) commercial line brokerages. This collaboration aims to enable seamless quoting, binding, and issuing of insurance policies directly within Salesforce, allowing brokerages to manage these processes from a single platform. As of the same date, the company partnered with Salesforce to integrate Herald's unified API into Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud. This integration allowed brokers using Salesforce to quote insurance products, compare prices and coverage across multiple carriers, and bind insurance instantly within their CRM system.

AgentSync develops modern insurance infrastructure solutions that automate and streamline compliance and producer management processes for insurance carriers, agencies, and MGAs. The company's core product offerings include AgentSync Manage, Autopilot, and ProducerSync API, which help validate licensing, appointing, and personal information for insurance producers by connecting with the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR). In January 2024, AgentSync launched its first commercially available ProducerSync API, which allows insurance businesses to access and validate NIPR data through REST API architecture. The company's technology reduces manual data entry processes from hours to minutes by using APIs and cloud-native solutions. In 2021, AgentSync acquired Finvera and subsequently acquired eContractPro in 2022. As of December 2021, the company generated annual revenue of USD 29.3 million.
Key customers and partnerships
AgentSync has established strategic partnerships with several industry leaders including the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR), Salesforce, Varicent, DocuSign, Verified First, Accurate, and LIMRA LOMA. Veterans United Insurance is among the company's notable customers. The company's platform enables its customers to onboard producers in hours instead of the traditional timeframe of weeks or months.

AgentSync

Artificial is an insurance software business offering an algorithmic underwriting, data extraction and machine learning platform to commercial insurers, empowering them to write better risks, faster. We provide solutions to partners across the London and global markets, including Convex, Chaucer and more. Our platform specialises in instantly and accurately capturing data at the point of entry for use in downstream applications. We enable clients to augment this data through effortless integrations and use it to write risks algorithmically, build contracts and plug into other systems. Behind the platform is decades' worth of experience in engineering, insurance and analysis. We do more than just provide software; we work with you every step of the journey to make sure our technology drives growth, improves efficiency and reduces costs across your business.

Artificial Labs

Bambi Dynamic developed a white-label mobility platform for the insurance sector. Their technology generated personalized, usage-based insurance options for the mobility sector, with the platform calculating premiums based on individual user data including driver safety scores, on-demand activation/deactivation, and time or distance driven. The system accounted for occasional drivers and multi-use vehicles, and was designed to integrate with IT systems of insurance companies, OEMs, and Mobility-as-a-Service providers such as ridesharing, ride-hailing, carsharing, e-scooters, and delivery services. The company operated between 2017 and 2023, ultimately ceasing operations in March 2023.
Key customers and partnerships
The company partnered with The Phoenix Insurance Company in Israel to launch 'The Phoenix Drive', a pay-as-you-go private vehicle insurance product. This offering included a web/mobile onboarding sales and underwriting portal for direct customers and insurance agents, back-office interfaces for insurers, and a consumer mobile app. Through this partnership, Bambi Dynamic was also involved in running the InsureMyTesla program in Israel.

Bambi Dynamic

CLARA Analytics offers an AI-powered insurance claims platform, aimed at improving claims outcomes. Its core claims platform is called CLARAty.ai, which includes generative and predictive AI models developed specifically for casualty claims. Its platform includes several products: 1) Claims Document Intelligent Pro, 2) Triage, 3) Treatment, 4) Litigation, 5) Clara Fraud, and 6) Clara MSP Compliance.&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32243">Claims Document Intelligent Pro</a> is an AI-powered tool that automates the review of claims documents, including legal demands and medical records. It can analyze thousands of pages in seconds, identify key information, and detect treatment patterns to assess risks, improving efficiency and reducing costs.CLARA Triage is an AI tool for claims professionals that predicts claim severity, identifies high-risk claims, and issues real-time alerts to help adjusters act proactively. It improves productivity, reduces costs, and enables faster resolution of simple claims.CLARA Treatment is an AI tool that scores healthcare providers to identify the best options for resolving workers' compensation cases quickly and effectively. It improves claim resolution times, enhances patient outcomes, and reduces costs by matching injured workers with the right providers.CLARA Litigation is an AI tool that analyzes attorney performance and provides insights to reduce the cost and impact of litigated claims. It offers strategic recommendations for case management and helps optimize attorney selection to support decision-making.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30120">CLARA Fraud</a> is an AI tool that analyzes large workers' compensation datasets to detect suspicious patterns and clusters of potentially fraudulent activity. It increases visibility into suspicious claims, supports SIU referrals, and reduces losses from undetected fraud.CLARA MSP Compliance is an AI tool that automates Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) compliance by identifying Medicare beneficiaries, determining the need for Medicare Set-Asides, and assisting with mandatory reporting. It reduces compliance risks, improves accuracy, and saves costs in handling Medicare-related claims.In 2023, the company launched CLARAty.ai, a casualty claims intelligence platform using predictive and generative AI to support claims professionals. It provides insights, recommended actions, and advanced claim summaries to guide next steps, enhancing traditional systems and workflows.Key customers and partnershipsIts notable customers include Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies, AmTrust, Amerisure, and QBE.&nbsp;Moreover, the company was selected by Amazon in August 2024, as its technology partner to improve health and claim outcomes for its corporate workers' compensation claims.

CLARA Analytics

Coterie Insurance is a Cincinnati-based insurtech company that provides digital small business insurance solutions. Founded in 2018, the company specializes in three main types of business insurance: general liability, business owners' policies, and professional liability coverage. The company employs digital underwriting technology that sources publicly available data to enable instant coverage through a transparent quoting and binding process. Its platform features a qualification checker that indicates within seconds if a business falls within Coterie's appetite. As of June 2022, Coterie's insurance products were available across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The company's policies are underwritten by Spinnaker Insurance Co. and Benchmark Insurance Co., both of which hold A-rated carrier ratings. The platform uses both ISO and proprietary coverage forms, with all policy documents, certificates, billing, and claims managed through a single dashboard. The system reduces paperwork by 80% compared to traditional methods by eliminating ACORD forms and manual underwriting processes.
Key customers and partnerships
The company serves small and micro-businesses across the US, with a particular focus on businesses with fewer than 20 employees. As of June 2022, Coterie worked with a network of 5,000 agents who provide personalized counsel to small business owners. The company's products are distributed both through independent insurance agents and brokers, and directly to business owners through its digital platform. The business maintains partnerships with Spinnaker Insurance Co. and Benchmark Insurance Co. who underwrite its insurance products.

Coterie Insurance

Providers of general, yet comprehensive, end-to-end solutions for insurance companies, covering various aspects of their operations. This includes core systems for policy administration, underwriting, claims processing, billing, and customer relationship management

Specialized platforms that offer lead generation and management services and tools for insurance providers. Tools can include telemarketing, internet, and social media lead generation, referrals, and lead analytics

Underwriting platforms that evaluate risks related to life insurance, health insurance, and related products such as disability and critical illness coverage. They may utilize medical underwriting criteria, genetic information, lifestyle factors, and demographic data to assess applicants' insurability

Platforms that specialize in assessing risks associated with property and casualty insurance, including home, auto, commercial property, and liability coverage. They may incorporate data sources such as property valuations, historical claims data, telematics, and weather patterns to evaluate risk factors accurately

Specialized platforms that streamline and automate claims processing workflows, from initial claim submission to settlement. They may offer software for claims intake, adjudication, fraud detection, and communication with policyholders and third-party service providers

Reinsurance technology providers offer a range of innovative tools and services to support reinsurers in managing their operations, assessing risks, and optimizing their reinsurance strategies. These solutions may include advanced analytics, catastrophe modeling, risk assessment tools, portfolio management systems, and underwriting platforms specifically designed for the reinsurance industry

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 Herald, a commercial insurance digital infrastructure provider, has secured USD 12 million in a Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Brewer Lane Ventures, with additional funding from Afore Capital and Underscore Venture Capital. The company's total funding now stands at USD 20 million.
 The funds raised will be deployed for the accelerated development of a unified API to connect insurance brokers and carriers. Particular attention will be given to enhancing the platform's AI capabilities in order to streamline commercial insurance workflows. The company also plans to expand its portfolio and reinforce its ties with carriers.
 Through their digital infrastructure, Herald presents a unified API that connects insurance brokers with carriers. This enables brokers to quote and bind insurance instantly by integrating Herald's API into their existing Agency Management Systems (AMS), Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM) or custom-built platforms.
 
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