2019 Startups to Watch: RiskGenius partnership carries KC software firm to next level

Editor’s note: Startland selected 12 Kansas City firms to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. The following is one of 2019’s companies. Click here to view the full, ranked list of Startups to Watch.

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RiskGenius’ elevator pitch: Software firm that helps people understand their insurance policy language and policy data faster.  

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RiskGenius’s recent partnership with insurance carrier QBE Insurance Group in 2018 sent a signal to the industry to look at the startup’s disruptive solutions, said Chris Cheatham.

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3) RiskGenius

Founders: Chris Cheatham, Doug Reiser
Founding year: 2012
Amount raised to date: $5 million
Noteworthy investors: Flyover Capital, QBE Ventures, Mid America Angels
Programs completed: Pipeline, Plug and Play
Current employee count: 19

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“[We’re getting] a lot of inbound interest,” said the founder. “We’ve got to have a lot more traction in terms of number of proof of concepts and the number of implementations going into this year.”

Employing the software firm’s products at QBE has prepared the team for what implementation of a new technology at a large insurance company takes, he added.

“Our operations team has worked closely with the QBE team to manage people and processes as they switch over to a new insurance forms library, and we now realize these types of close working relationships are vital to the success of launching RiskGenius within any company,” said Cheatham.

The RiskGenius team is not short on industry experience, said Cheatham, noting the secret behind properly applied AI programs does not lie in the algorithms themselves.

“It’s how you then deploy those algorithms to fix a problem,” he said. “Everyone here has just studied the insurance industry. We’ve had thousands of demos with insurance professionals at this point and understand their workflows.”

Manually rifling through 300 pages of documents per policy may take faster employees a matter of hours, but some companies might have as many as 35,000 policies in place, he explained, noting the AI and machine learning solution allows information to pinpointed immediately.

“You can find it, get to it, review it, and be on your way,” said Cheatham.

2019 will include the rolling out of a new policy checking tool, as well as see the startup continuing to foster implementations of the products at different carriers, he said, noting a main focus is on delivering on RiskGenius’ promises.

“It’s not testing products and making sure things work [anymore,]” he added. “It’s execution and making sure people are happy with the software.”

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Startups to Watch in 2019

1) Bungii
2) ShotTracker
3) RiskGenius
4) Metactive
5) Pepper IoT
6) Signal Kit
7) Life Equals
8) Bellwethr
9) Homebase.ai
10) Tea-Biotics Kombucha
11) SquareOffs
12) Zohr