This is a First Look: It's the first time any news outlet or blog has covered this startup. You can read more First Looks here. (We do this a lot.)
Another former executive from Boston online insurance agency Goji is aiming to change the way insurance works through the power of technology. Except instead of using software to reduce or eliminate the need for human interaction like Boston insurance startup Quilt is, former Goji COO Casey Gustus is using it to empower the human element.
Gustus' new venture is called Apliant, and its a software-as-a-service platform that aims to help traditional insurance agencies and carriers expand into new markets and reach more customers, as well as make their current operations a lot more efficient. It also wraps together several tools that were previously disconnected for agencies, including plan comparison ratings, marketing intelligence, customer relationship management and integrated telephony.
"We give them the efficiency to participate in new markets."
Besides having a former Goji executive as its CEO and founder, Apliant's other similarity to Quilt is the super-team of sorts that it has built: the two others on the leadership team are COO Reilly Bayer, co-founder and former COO of Cambridge-based EverQuote, and CTO Jon Erickson, former chief architect of Continuum and a former venture partner at Fidelity Investments.
Gustus told BostInno exclusively that Apliant raised a seed round of financing for an undisclosed amount last fall from Boston-based MassMutual Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Springfield-based MassMutual. Also participating in the round was Kepha Partners and several individual investors who have been involved in the insurance agency. MassMutual Ventures started in 2014 and has so far invested $45 million into 13 companies from the $100 million fund it raised.
The idea for Apliant started while Gustus was still at Goji and came to the conclusion "that insurance is more complicated than anyone else realized," which means that insurance agents still play an important role in educating customers.
"They can't be replaced by purely digital experiences, which means agents will be part of the buying process in the future" that also involves the insurance carriers themselves, Gustus said. "So with Apliant and our technology toolkit for agents, we hope to better facilitate the connection among all of those parties."
One of the bigger selling points for Apliant seems to be that it can help agencies and carrier reach new customers that are beyond their immediate geographical reach. Gustus said the startup has partnered with a number of established marketing channels that can help refer customers to agencies that may not be close in proximity. This includes having a system in place for when one particular agency needs to refer a customer to another agency because it doesn't have a certain product.
Gustus said he compares it to a mix between a traditional taxi and Uber, where agencies can still acquire customers the way they always used to but then they can use Apliant to pick up even more on demand.
"We give them the efficiency to participate in new markets," Gustus said.
Eric Emmons, managing director of MassMutual Ventures, said he first met Gustus through a common contact when he was still at Goji. He said MassMutual's venture arm tends to invest in companies that "have the potential to change the landscape in areas MassMutual participates in," including life insurance, wealth management and retirement plans.
"What we found compelling [with Apliant] was the ability for these independent agencies to essentially enter into an on-demand economy approach, to increase the utilization rate of their agents and make them more profitable," Emmons said.
Apliant currently works with a number of agencies, ranging in size from agencies with three employees to ones with over 100. Gustus declined to say how many and which ones, but noted that many have of them have names people would recognized. The agencies and carriers are charged through a pricing model that aligns "with the value created for agencies and carriers," through he declined to get more specific. The startup currently has nine employees in an office in Fort Point.
