We hesitated between rap and insurance…

Previously, we hit $1M in annual revenue building insurance workflows for brokers. Then we realized the bigger opportunity was replacing them.

In the US, there are 36 million SMBs, and 77% are underinsured because distribution is broken. Brokers can’t serve low-premium SMBs profitably: a $2K policy takes almost as much work as a $20K one.

Kinro changes that. Our AI agents handle the full broker workflow 24/7, from finding prospects to binding policies.

In 3 weeks, we got licensed in 30 states, appointed by 15 carriers, and we bound the first-ever autonomously sold insurance policy.

Before Kinro, Pierre-Alexandre was an AI researcher at DeepMind (post-training Gemini on financial services). Parth Ainampudi led ML infra at Zoox and I was Chief Insurance Officer at an MGA (insurtech).

Asks

If you ever need commercial insurance and want us to shop for you, hit us at kinro.com (yes we bought the domain for $25k, story here)! 

Post-pivot, Kinro goes to Atlanta to work for 48 straight hours with a retail broker specialized in selling to residential contractors.

Q&A

“Why pivot?”

We entered YC with a signed $1M enterprise sale to the 2nd largest auto-insurance comparator in the US a few days before (and a third of that money was wired). 

First OH, @Nicolas Dessaigne asked us “Why not become a broker directly?”. 

We told him we thought we could reproduce that sale with other brokers and maybe carriers. A month in, we hadn’t yet reproduced the same feat (though we had secured a pilot with the 3rd insurance broker on Earth: WTW). It became more and more obvious that integrations were deep (and FDE intensive) and enterprise sales were endless.

What felt most off was the gap between what we were doing and our long-term vision: helping small business owners and individuals find the right insurance, wherever they are and whenever they need it.

“So why not just build that?”  

We always knew we would eventually. Selling to brokers gave us a way to learn while getting paid. But we realized we weren’t learning as fast as we would by building directly for the people we ultimately wanted to serve.

1.5 months later, we came back to him “Nicolas, we want to become brokers… and this $1M is bad for us”, he simply answered “Oh I told you guys, this was obvious” (LOL). Walking away from >1M+ from all our clients felt easier after talking about this to @Nicolas Dessaigne and @Mathilde Collin. Without YC, we would have waited much longer.

“What types of insurance do you sell?”

We sell small business insurance (General Liability, Business Owner’s policy, Worker’s compensation, Commercial Auto…). We focus on admitted markets where checking carriers' appetite and getting quotes can be fully automated with no communication with carriers.

This new launch video as embarrassing as it is is worth watching! Send us a text if you want your angels to take care of your business.