Participated · Series C · Jul 2024

Gradient AI is an enterprise software provider that delivers artificial intelligence tools tailored to the insurance industry. Its SaaS platform taps a vast industry data lake containing tens of millions of policies and claims, as well as economic, health, geographic, and demographic variables, to forecast underwriting and claims risk with heightened accuracy. By automating risk assessment and claims processing, carriers can lower quote turnaround times, cut claim expenses, and boost profitability. Customers include leading insurance carriers, managing general agents/underwriters, third-party administrators, risk pools, professional employer organizations, and large self-insured employers across all major lines. The company plans to use newly secured growth capital to enhance its platform and expand its market footprint, aiming to further address evolving challenges in risk assessment and claims management. Gradient AI is backed by venture investors Centana Growth Partners, MassMutual Ventures, Sandbox Insurtech Ventures, and Forte Ventures.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2022

Data.World is a cloud-native, SaaS enterprise data catalog that maps and documents an organization’s data assets using a knowledge-graph approach to provide semantically organized discovery, governance and analytics. The platform offers data discovery, lineage, metadata indexing, privacy controls (masking/hiding/anonymization), secure data virtualization and monitoring for security and compliance. Data.World has an open-source metadata model and integration toolkit called Kos and plans forthcoming automations for metadata and governance tasks alongside UI enhancements. The company reports more than 1.6 million members across customers including the Associated Press and Penguin Random House, and counts states, counties and local government agencies among its users. Management says the new funding will support global expansion, product innovation and talent acquisition as it pursues greater public-sector traction and broader enterprise adoption. Data.World provides a cloud-native enterprise data catalog and agile data governance solution that maps data to business concepts via a knowledge graph, plus on‑premises tools for inventorying and organizing data across systems. The platform supports metadata ingestion via collection agents, APIs, file transfers, and imports, and lets users save and share queries, analyses, and findings. It includes analytics for discovery, fine-grained permissions, automatic provenance and lineage tracking, and a collaboration dashboard with activity feeds and alerts. The company also operates a large open data community that surpassed one million users and includes members from more than two‑thirds of the Fortune 500. Data.World was co-founded by Brett Hurt (CEO), Bryon Jacob, Jon Loyens, and Matt Laessig; customers named in the article include the Associated Press, CareOregon, and Wunderman Thompson. The company has about 85 employees and has seen quarter‑over‑quarter customer expansion and a doubling of enterprise customers in the past 12 months. Data.World provides a data catalog that maps data to business concepts to create a unified body of knowledge, offering cloud and on-premises management tools for inventorying and organizing enterprise data. The platform lets users save and share queries, analyses, and findings in real time and supports metadata ingestion via agents, APIs, file transfers, and imports. It includes fine-grained permissions, automatic provenance and lineage tracking, and a collaboration dashboard built on a custom knowledge graph and visualization technologies. The company has launched initiatives like a free Coronavirus Data Resource Hub to support COVID-19 research. CEO Brett Hurt says proceeds from the new funding will be used to accelerate data governance efforts and scale to meet demand. Data.World reports quarter-over-quarter customer expansion and new customer acquisition and counts clients including the Associated Press, CareOregon, and Wunderman Thompson. Data.world operates a collaborative data community and enterprise platform that lets teams upload, exchange and catalog datasets and discuss findings internally. The platform integrates with Tableau, Microsoft Excel, Power BI, IBM SPSS, MicroStrategy, Google Data Studio and other analytics tools, and is widely used by journalists. Data.world says its product helps Fortune 500 companies close the “data divide” with digital-native firms by democratizing access to high-quality data. The company recently rolled out an enterprise offering and will use new capital to continue building that product; The Associated Press is a customer. CEO Brett Hurt cites GitHub as an inspiration for democratizing access to data, and the platform has been positioned as a tool for data journalism. Financially, Data.world has raised a total of $45.3M since its 2016 launch, including an $18.7M Series B in February 2017. data.world is a Certified B Corporation and social network for data people that builds a collaborative resource to ease data discovery and collaboration across sectors including health, education, finance, government, public safety, agriculture and weather. Led by co-founder and CEO Brett Hurt, the company offers collaborative workspaces and has launched initiatives such as dwSQL, a new SQL dialect bridging linked data and relational databases. Since its preview launch in July 2016, data.world has introduced core capabilities and projects to drive collaboration within public and private data workspaces. It has powered projects including the White House Opportunity Project workspace, an Anti-Defamation League public workspace, a joint-venture partnership with the U.S. Commerce Department NTIS, the DoD data.mil portal, and publication of metadata for the CIA Crest Archive. The company raised $18.7M in the reported round and has now raised a total of $32.7M. data.world intends to use the funds to continue building its data resource and expand its collaborative capabilities.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2021

Rollick operates the GoRollick Powersports, RV, and Boat Buying Program Marketplace, connecting manufacturers, dealers, and finance and insurance providers with in-market consumers to deliver a seamless customer journey. Its solutions include new customer acquisition, enterprise lead management, customer experience/loyalty, and marketing automation. The GoRollick.com marketplace includes a nationwide network of dealers and relationships with over 80 manufacturers. Its affinity partner network provides access to over 250 million customers, including insurance policyholders, employees at more than 2,000 top U.S. companies, members of the military, veterans, and first responders. Rollick is led by founder and CEO Bernie Brenner and is based in Austin, TX and St. Louis. The company has raised a total of $22M to date and will use the new funds to expand programs nationwide and secure new programs from recreation industry players. Rollick is an Austin, Texas-based affinity buying program and enterprise lead management solution that connects manufacturers, dealers and in-market consumers across the powersports, RV, marine and industrial equipment industries. Its product suite includes new customer acquisition, enterprise lead management, customer experience/loyalty and marketing automation, and it operates a national outdoor recreational vehicle buying network spanning hundreds of dealers and more than 60 manufacturers. The company reports an affinity partner network with access to over 50 million customers, including insurance policyholders, employees at more than 2,000 top U.S. companies, members of the military, veterans and first responders. A portion of recent funding was used to acquire Avala Marketing Group, an OEM-to-dealer marketing automation, lead-nurturing and loyalty management platform focused on marine, RV and industrial manufacturers. Rollick plans to use its capital to continue progress in the powersports and RV industries and to expand its full suite of products into the marine and industrial channels. The combined company aims to provide manufacturers and retailers in distributed dealer networks with an end-to-end marketing solution. Rollick is developing an online marketing platform aimed at RV, boat, motorcycle and powersports dealers to create a more personalized, digital buying experience. The company plans to launch in select markets including central Texas this year and to expand nationally in early 2018. It will use the newly raised capital to hire sales and marketing staff in Austin and to accelerate product rollout. Rollick’s leadership includes CEO Bernie Brenner (co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of TrueCar), President Amit Maheshwari (former SVP of global enterprise solutions at Cox Automotive) and COO Mike Timmons (former EVP of dealer sales operations at TrueCar). The company positions its product as modernizing marketing and search to help consumers find the right product and work with the right dealer. Financially, the article reports a $5.6 million funding round to support these plans.

Led · Seed · Jul 2020

Layr offers a cloud-based platform and services that modernize the complex, manual workflows of small-business insurance for independent brokerages. Its tools let brokers serve up to six times more small-business clients by digitizing paperwork, eliminating manual invoices and checks, and automating carrier integrations and workflows. Policyholders access a white-labeled, secure online portal to shop for or renew coverage, file claims, generate documents, and pay bills 24×7. The platform includes a broker-facing analytics dashboard that surfaces insights and trends to improve operations and margins. Layr plans to use new financing to expand go-to-market operations and bolster platform functionality for brokers. The company positions its product as a way to move broker small-business units into higher-margin territory while improving policyholder experience. Layr is an Atlanta, GA-based insurtech company that uses AI and machine learning to help brokerages and agencies manage small commercial insurance books. Its AI-powered cloud platform digitizes the insurance process by enabling brokers to sell, service, and renew policies through a private-labeled service center. Proprietary algorithms quote pricing while simultaneously shopping pre-written packages to underwriters without broker touch or APIs, and placed policies allow end-clients to self-service and access proof of insurance from broker-branded portals. Layr currently supports P&C agencies and brokerages across all 50 states and helps sell and service tens of millions of dollars of premium across their books. The company plans to double its team, grow its presence among insurance agents and brokers, add technology advancements, and expand offerings to provide tailored solutions to agencies of all sizes. Led by founder and CEO Phillip Naples, Layr intends to release new features and partner with technology providers to better support independent brokers. Layr operates a cloud insurance platform that automates sourcing, purchasing and managing small commercial insurance using AI and machine learning. The company provides tailored policy recommendations and coverage limits and partners with carriers and traditional brokers to distribute policies. Since launching its platform in 2018, Layr has placed more than $2B of aggregate coverage limits across thousands of policies. Layr plans to use new funding to expand AI/ML capabilities for the next version of its platform, including intelligent recommendations and a streamlined application process. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Phillip Naples and Andrew Egenes and was incubated in the first cohort of Lloyd’s Lab.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2020

Prove Identity builds mobile-first identity verification technology that links a phone’s SIM data with handset functionality (for example, facial recognition) to authenticate users and trigger actions like pre-filled forms, verification flows and password-free authentication. The company says the mobile handset remains central to its proposition and markets its tools as delivering faster onboarding, lower abandonment and reduced fraud (it cites 79% faster onboarding, 35% reduction in abandonment and a 75% reduction in fraud). Prove serves roughly 1,000 business customers, including major banks, retailers, insurers and firms such as FanDuel, Experian, Visa, Starbucks, BlueCross BlueShield and DocuSign. It reported 40% international growth in the last year and says it is cash-flow positive. Historically, the company (originally Payfone) reported processing 20 billion authentications in 2019 and was founded around 2008. Prove plans to use the new funding to build out more tools for digital payments and commerce and to expand its fraud-detection capabilities. Payfone provides a B2B2C platform that creates trust scores and tokens from telecoms and mobile-phone signals to identify and verify users without storing personal data. Its technology is used by carriers, banks, healthcare and insurance companies to authenticate transactions and logins, operating invisibly as a complement or alternative to other authentication methods. The company plans to build more machine learning into its algorithms, expand into 35 additional geographies, and pursue strategic acquisitions to broaden its technology stack. Payfone has discussed forming a consortium or clearing-house approach to share identity signals securely. It processed 20 billion authentications in 2019 and reported roughly 70% year-over-year growth, with a stated aim to reach 100 billion authentications in coming years. Payfone says it is already profitable and has raised $175 million to date. Payfone provides Trust Platform™ and Trust Score™ to enable businesses to instantly verify customers and thwart fraud and cyberattacks in real time. The company operates within a privacy-first, zero-knowledge framework that prevents consumer information from being passed, stored, or aggregated. In March it announced the next phase of its Zero-Knowledge architecture to enable identity verification partners, such as mobile network operators, to verify identities without sharing consumer information. Payfone serves six of the top ten US financial institutions and customers in healthcare, insurance, technology and retail. In 2018 the company authenticated 20 billion transactions for Fortune 500 companies and said it expected to double that number in 2019. The company is led by CEO Rodger Desai. Payfone operates a patented digital identity authentication platform that dynamically analyzes millions of signals to generate a proprietary Trust Score for each digital identity. Its product suite includes Fonebook, Instant Authentication for Mobile, Instant Authentication for Voice, Trust Score, and Identity Pre-Fill, all intended to accelerate revenue, improve conversions, and reduce fraud and operating expense. Payfone positions its technology to replace one-time SMS passcodes and knowledge-based authentication, thwart SIM-swap and porting fraud, and improve call-center authentication. The company says it is trusted by the world’s largest banks, insurers, brokerages and technology companies and targets sectors including retail, financial services, insurance, healthcare and technology. Payfone emphasizes delivering strong cybersecurity without sacrificing customer experience and aims to expand these benefits to more companies and customers. The company’s latest funding round totals $23 million; terms of the round were not disclosed. Payfone is a New York–based provider of mobile identity authentication for digital channels. It develops a patented mobile authentication technology that businesses use to protect customers from identity theft and social engineering attacks. The company's solution is positioned to limit fraud losses and reduce authentication-related expenses while driving customer engagement. Payfone is led by CEO Rodger Desai. In May 2017 the company raised $23.5m in a Series E financing. The round also included board additions tied to the financing.