Startups walk a fine line in their pathway to something bigger.
Sometimes, it doesn’t work out.
CrowFly, a local startup created by John Bair, Tony Barnes and Nita Bhatia, has been wound down by its leadership group.
CrowFly created a marketplace for structured settlements, seeking to connect people who want to sell their settlements with a supply of potential buyers.
“After four years, and over a million in individual investment from me, achieving the goal of fundamentally changing the industry for the better became unviable,” Bair said.
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CrowFly was created in 2017 under the umbrella of Seventh Amendment Holdings, which also includes Milestone Consulting. Bair recently passed the CEO role of Seventh Amendment over to Amy Fogle, while CrowFly was spun out into its own business.
Bair said CrowFly was independent from Milestone. The latter company is "bigger and better than ever" and preparing to move into its new headquarters on the 13th floor of 50 Fountain Plaza in downtown Buffalo, he said.
Bhatia was elevated to CEO post at CrowFly in late 2021, and the company saw 400% year-over-year revenue growth. Its team reached 15 employees.
Bair made sure to praise the CrowFly leadership and team, whose “efforts kept us in the game longer and built an impressive credential for the firm in just a few short years, a key component of our success.”
But, he said, “market dynamics and the lack of institutional interest in helping the people in this small industry proved too difficult to overcome given our mission of people over profits."
CrowFly proposed to introduce transparency into the structured settlement industry.
A structured settlement is a monetary award, such as winning a personal injury lawsuit and the money is paid out over time. The awardee can sell those settlements to get all the cash at once, but much less than the entire settlement is worth.
Bair said he’s proud of the company’s position as a benevolent actor in a chaotic and unregulated industry, and said the startup helped hundreds of families through the structured settlement process. He said that if a major institutional investor ever takes a serious interest in space, “there will someday be hope that the real people in the structured settlement industry can be served by ethical and professional people if and when they need to sell.”
One of CrowFly’s partners issued a statement on behalf of the project.
“CrowFly, since its inception, focused on providing exceptional service to their customers in hopes of making a positive impact on their customer’s lives and the lives of their families,” said Brian Dear, executive director of the National Association of Settlement Purchasers. “It is unfortunate that CrowFly has closed their doors.”
