The TL;DR on our recent financing round.
Last month, we announced our $10 million Series A led by Link Ventures with participation from Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, M25, Fiat Ventures, and Invest Nebraska. You can read the full release here.
We’re incredibly excited to partner with Dave Blundin, Lisa Dolan, and the rest of the crew at Link Ventures. They are early pioneers in data-driven digital acquisition and have an impressive track record of building and scaling consumer-focused companies. They’ve compiled a high-caliber portfolio of insurtech and fintech companies including Healthcare.com, Trust & Will, EverQuote, and MotoRefi. We're honored to join that list.
We’re also ecstatic to double down with our good friends at Fiat Ventures. They’re a collection of impressive alumni from leading startups like Chime, SoFi, Steady, and Namely, and will continue to play a big role in our growth story.
Lastly, we had participation from some amazing individual investors with long careers in the insurance industry that will be instrumental as we continue to build and iterate on Breeze.
You probably haven’t heard of Breeze. Yet.
We’ve been a small, scrappy insurtech team based out of Omaha, Nebraska, and we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else to grow this company. It's an ideal location to build the new age of insurance.
Seriously, there’s a lot of insurance around here.
Some of the major insurance carriers in Nebraska and Iowa -1) Assurity; 2) Ameritas; 3) Mutual of Omaha; 4) Physicians Mutual; 5) Woodman Life; 6) Principal Financial Group; 7) Sammons Financial; 8) Fidelity & Guaranty
We’re building a company that protects people and their income when hard things happen. Chances are you know someone that has been in an accident or been diagnosed with a life-changing condition like cancer. You’ve probably donated to a crowdfunding campaign at some point to help family or friends who have been impacted by an unexpected accident or medical diagnosis.
And while crowdfunding campaigns are powerful and showcase some of the best of humanity, Breeze is creating a more reliable solution to financially prepare for the unexpected.
The reality is most people are more financially prepared to die than they are to live after experiencing a major accident or life-changing medical condition, even though the latter is far more likely to happen during your working years.
Read that last sentence again. The data is overwhelming.
In 2021, 52% of Americans own life insurance, but only about one-third own a disability insurance policy.
However, you’re about three times as likely to face disability instead of death during your working years.
Why the discrepancy?
Insurance has been a massive, broken consumer experience for a long time, and it has left many people severely unprepared for some of life's most vulnerable moments. Expensive policies. Confusing vernacular. Ridiculously long underwriting times. The list goes on.
Breeze is fixing that with completely digital products that are readily accessible to all genders, occupations, and income levels. Disability insurance or critical illness insurance that can be applied for completely online and if approved, issued on the spot. And a team of rockstar customer support specialists to answer any questions along the way.
How we’re investing the money.
We’re using this capital to continue rapidly scaling our direct-to-consumer policyholders, bring new products to market, and build out our agent channel.
If you know anything about disability insurance it's that agents hate writing it. It’s been way too complex and way too confusing for agents to educate consumers on why it’s arguably the most important type of insurance you should have to protect your income and future.
We recently hired Andrew Hamill, a long-time industry exec, to build our agent network. We’re surrounding him with eager insurance professionals that want to empower agents to holistically protect their customers. And we're providing simple tools to help easily quote, explain, apply, and bind.
To support our growth across D2C and traditional distribution channels, we’re also scaling up our marketing, product, and support teams. We’ve already added integral remote team members in California, South Carolina, and New Jersey, and we will continue to build and operate as a distributed, remote-friendly team based out of Omaha.
All in the pursuit of simplicity, speed, and superior insurance protection.
Stay tuned.
Colin
