As a volunteer for Hurricane Sandy victims, Georgia Tech student Wesley Pergament saw the vulnerability of homeowners amid natural disasters. But as a software engineer for insurance technology startup Dorothy, he also noticed a gap in insurance protection.
Due to limits, exclusions and deductibles in insurance policies, it can take weeks or months for homeowners to get the money they need following a natural disaster.
So, Pergament got to work. He built out a proprietary model for an insurance startup that can assist homeowners affected by tornadoes, dubbed "Sola." That concept won him and his team first place at Georgia Tech's InVenture Prize, the university's premier contest for student-led startups.
Sola received $20,000 from the competition, which it used for product development, Pergament said. The prize also scored Sola a free U.S. patent filing from Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing and a spot in the university's startup incubator CREATE-X. That incubator includes well known alumni such as supply chain technology startup Stord, which reached a $1 billion valuation last year.
Now, Pergament is taking the company from campus to insurance providers. The company’s goal is to partner with companies and sell to 25,000 policy holders in its first year, 100,000 in the second year and 500,000 by the third. Sola would become an optional add-on to people’s coverage.
“If we partner with just four or five [home insurance companies], we can launch in three of four states with them and right out of the gate," Pergament said. "We’d have access to hundreds of agents and thousands of policyholders.”
The company is currently having conversations with homeowners insurance companies about how to integrate their service. Those companies include sponsors of the Global Insurance Accelerator, an Iowa-based program Sola completed before the InVenture Prize competition. Pergament declined to name the exact companies.
Sola uses data from the National Weather Service's assessments of tornado damage to pinpoint exact homes that were affected by disasters. Payments are sent to homeowners with the Sola add-on. The company also uses 70 years of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NWS to calculate the likelihood of future disasters and what payments could be needed.
“A majority of complaints are related to claims handling such as a delay in payments, and a significant amount of homeowners are worried about tornadoes more than any other natural disaster," Pergament said.
The company’s team currently consists of Pergament as CEO; Jeffrey Zhou as vice president of engineering; and Brayden Drury as operations manager. Pergament plans on having up to three interns over the summer and hiring insurance experts and lawyers in the future.
The company also has future ambitions of branching to cover all natural disasters such as hurricanes as well as resolving gaps in auto and life insurance policies.
