The Venture Codex

Participated · Series C · May 2025

Empathy offers a loss-support platform and recently expanded into legacy planning with Empathy LifeVault, which enables creation and secure storage of legally binding estate plans and documents. The company integrates AI to improve the Care Team’s speed, accuracy, and automation while maintaining human-led support. Empathy reports coverage for over 45 million lives and handles one in five U.S. life insurance claims beyond the payout. Its offerings are distributed through partnerships with eight of the top ten U.S. life insurers and more than one thousand employers, and are available across North America, including every U.S. state and Canada. In the past four months, seven million individuals have received access to LifeVault through partners such as Aflac and New York Life. Empathy says it plans to deepen capabilities, accelerate product innovation, scale platform offerings, and expand its support ecosystem to reach more families during difficult moments. Empathy offers a bereavement-care platform that mixes AI tooling with human guides to support tasks from counseling and obituary writing to shutting down digital accounts and settling complex financial affairs. The company primarily sells via a B2B2C model through employers and insurers, which account for 99% of its business. Empathy reports some 40 million people using its platform (about 5 million employees and 35 million policyholders). The startup was founded in Israel and maintains R&D there while focusing its commercial efforts in the U.S.; it launched in the U.S. in 2021. Leadership includes CEO and co-founder Ron Gura and co-founder Yonatan Bergman. The company plans to use new funding to build more AI tools and continue its mission to “redefine bereavement care” while keeping human teams for empathetic services. Empathy offers a digital assistant that guides bereaved executors and families through practical tasks (estate paperwork, taxes) and emotional support (links to counseling and other resources). Its technology was built in Israel and the company chose to launch in the U.S. Early traction has been strong: about 250,000 bereaved executors visit and use Empathy’s services each month, and the company says it has captured a "nice, single-digit percent" of the market. Empathy is expanding partnerships with stakeholders in the end-of-life process, and to date some 300 cemeteries and 72 funeral homes refer customers to the service. The product mix includes wholly free resources as well as paid services. To support growth and keep up with demand, Empathy recently raised new capital; the company is not disclosing its valuation. Empathy combines technology and human support to provide a digital companion application that empowers bereaved families. The software streamlines end-of-life bureaucracy, minimizes tedious tasks, and automates processes involved in the administration of an estate. The team includes professionals from legal, accounting, product design, engineering, and cybersecurity, alongside grief experts who support families. Empathy launched its application on iOS and Android for users across the United States. The company intends to use its recent funding to continue expanding operations and its business reach. Empathy is led by founders Ron Gura and Yonatan Bergman and is based in New York and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2022

PolicyMe is a Canada‑focused digital insurance company whose product suite includes Life Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, and newly launched Health & Dental coverage, alongside an end‑to‑end white‑labeled platform for partners. The company expanded from life insurance into Health & Dental and converted its digital customer journey into a comprehensive white‑label solution that integrates quoting, underwriting, and policy issuance. That platform is designed to cut partners' time‑to‑market to 3–6 months and already powers launches for Blue Cross Life and Securian Canada. Since its 2022 Series A, PolicyMe has scaled nationwide, selling over $10 billion in coverage, growing annual premium sales 5.5x, servicing thousands of Canadians monthly, and operating in every province. Headcount has nearly tripled to about 100 employees to support product and customer growth. PolicyMe has raised additional capital (CAD $30M) through equity and debt tranches to fund product expansion and B2B2C growth. The company is investing in data, analytics, and AI infrastructure to improve underwriting and streamline the customer journey, positioning itself to lead AI‑driven transformation in the insurance industry. PolicyMe is a digital-first Canadian life insurance provider that offers fully underwritten term life insurance through an online application. The company began with a coverage calculator and price-comparison platform and launched a fully underwritten digital product in March of last year with Canadian Premier Life Insurance Company. By automating underwriting and distribution, PolicyMe prices its product 10–20% lower than many traditional offerings; 84% of customers purchased without a medical exam and most can apply and secure a policy in 20 minutes or less. The company has sold over $5 billion in life insurance coverage and grew over 1,050% from 2019 to 2021. PolicyMe plans to scale a comprehensive product suite distributed direct-to-consumer and via B2B2C channels, launch an embedded solution with two fintech partners later this year, and release a critical-illness product covering over 40 conditions. Since March 2020 the team has more than tripled to 47 employees and is fully remote with optional office access in downtown Toronto. PolicyMe operates a digital life-insurance comparison site and buying flow. The company was founded in 2018 and is led by Andrew Ostro and Laura McKay, with a team of about 11 people. PolicyMe says it is trusted by over 30,000 Canadians and reports advising roughly 26% of those users not to purchase a PolicyMe product. SimilarWeb data cited in the articles indicates the site has relatively low web traffic. PolicyMe raised $3.3 million and will use the funds to enhance its life-insurance buying process with new technology and financial literacy tools. The company emphasizes transparent, personalized advice as a core part of its customer experience.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2016

Ascend Consumer Finance is a San Francisco-based financial technology company that has developed Adaptive Risk Pricing technology to let consumers demonstrate real-time creditworthiness through positive financial behaviors. Its first product, RateRewards, enables borrowers to reduce monthly interest expense by displaying and tracking positive financial behaviors throughout a loan’s life. The company is led by Steve Carlson (CEO) and Scott Crawford (VP of Product and Marketing). Ascend raised $11M in venture capital to accelerate loan origination growth and enhance the RateRewards user experience. Backers include a mix of venture firms and industry programs supporting its growth and product development. Ascend Consumer Financial has launched RateRewards, a product that introduces dynamic pricing into three‑year personal loans of up to $10,000 for borrowers with FICO scores of 580–660. Under RateRewards, borrowers accept a slightly higher initial rate with the possibility of earning up to a 50% equivalent interest‑expense reduction by meeting tracked financial behaviors over four months. The company’s Adaptive Risk Pricing platform monitors four factors—two from credit bureaus (reducing overall monthly debt by at least $50 and limiting credit‑card spending), one via Yodlee (increasing emergency savings by at least $50/month), and a willingness to pledge a car title if owned. Monthly repayments are adjusted downward when behaviors are met (the nominal interest rate is not legally revised), and reductions can be reversed but never exceed the original monthly payment. CEO Steve Carlson, formerly of Intuit and HSBC and an advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, says the product targets roughly 110 million U.S. non‑prime borrowers who may be better risks than their scores indicate. Ascend plans to staff up operations and marketing using proceeds from its seed raise and expects future incorporation of real‑time phone monitoring into pricing triggers.