Coterie Insurance Profile

“Small business insurance — we manufacture, service and distribute small business insurance.”

“Our mission is to build and foster a world-class team to bring speed, simplicity, and service to commercial insurance.

Values: 

Intelligence

• Always be learning.
• Fight bias. Stay curious. Seek understanding.
• Passion
• Make your work your craft.
• Know and pursue your personal ‘why.’ Put your heart into your work. Pursue excellence. Relentless pursuit with pure intentions. Go above and beyond. Get fired up and smile about your work.

Integrity

• Do the right thing, even when it’s hard.
• Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of your hometown newspaper. Listen to your conscience. Make your mother proud. Practice the Golden rule.

Humility

• Not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
• Be quick to take responsibility and assign credit. Prop up others. Do what’s best for the team, not just for you. Put others before self.”

“Through investors. We are through our Series C funding round and have raised around $75 million.”

“We have around 140 full-time employees who are spread across the country. We are fully remote but maintain an office in Cincinnati. This has allowed us to hire an incredible team.”

“‘Coterie’ means an intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose. That explains what we set out to do, and we settled on the name early and pushed forward. 

That said, one of his biggest lessons learned was not paying for the coterie.com domain early on. It seemed expensive, but it was later snatched up by a diaper company who we now have to compete with in SEO.”

“I saw starting a business as a means to an end. The most effective and efficient way to change the insurance space in the way that I envisioned was to start my own business.”

“The biggest obstacle was the mental one to just do it. External obstacles are always there, but many can be overcome if we have the will. That isn't an absolute truth. There are plenty of obstacles that cannot be overcome. I can't will myself to be taller, which is an obstacle if my goal were to play in the NBA. However, I can will myself to work hard to become a better basketball player. Success, in that sense, is not necessarily about overcoming a specific obstacle, but understanding how what you have control over can help you unlock what you're looking to do from a first principles standpoint. Going back to the previous example, a lot of people will say they couldn't play in the NBA because of their height. They provide an obstacle that can't be overcome by the resources under their control. Whereas others will redefine the obstacle, so they have a chance of achieving their goal.

I overcame this obstacle by getting up each day and just moving forward, even when people thought I was nuts. Even when investors backed out. Even when I couldn't pay people. Even when we ran out of money. Even when it all was doomed to fail. You just wake up and keep going.”

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“Right now, our target market is partners, including agents and brokers, as small business insurance is primarily sold through agents and brokers. We are a partnership-focused company.”

“We 100% market to agents and brokers, seeking to educate them about how easy writing small commercial policies is with Coterie. Many insurtechs leave agents and brokers out of purchasing, but we understand the value that an insurance expert has to small businesses. Insurance is complicated; no one should feel they have to go it alone.”

“Through our first partnership, which was a fully integrated, micro-insurance offering through a gig-econ mobile app. They could bind insurance with the click of a button on a per-job basis. It was pretty cool.”

“Direct written premium, logins, approved quotes.”

“‘High Output Management’”

“MitiS.”

“Would recommend Zoom because all investors use it — anyone can use it. I use Signal (NFX) to find connections to various investors who like the insurtech space.”

“How much ideas don't matter — it's all about execution.”

“I don't look at the two as separate. I don't recommend this for everyone, but [what] I do is a part of my life, and I enjoy my life. If you come to work with the mentality that this is your life, then it's not a different part of your life. It is your life, and you enjoy that. Not separate things. If you incorporate everything into our lives, things are more unified and go better. 

I've thought this way since school. Not something I had to do — I saw it as something I do and choose to do.”

“I've always been focused on my start-up. From the beginning, I wanted to start an insurance company because I saw what tech could do to improve the space.

When it became time, it was when I was afraid to do it. If I was afraid to do it, it meant it was probably the right time because there was a realistic opportunity. It was pulling me in, and when something big happens like that, we tend to get afraid. If there is something potentially beneficial and I'm afraid, I should just do it.”

“Learned my work ethic from working at a restaurant when I was in fourth grade. The school partnered with a family-chain restaurant, and we had to do various jobs in the restaurant to learn what working was about. I got to do everything from cleaning to hanging out in the kitchen and waiting tables. The manager liked me so much that he offered me a paying job for kitchen work. I took him up on it, but it didn't work out. [I’ve] always been a hard worker; [it] taught me that if you do work hard, people value that regardless of your age.”