Humanization of the Enterprise

In a world of constant disruption and innovation, human interactivity and connection will always have a place amongst our basic needs. This is why so many companies replacing brokers and agents of various sources can build big, profitable companies but oftentimes exist only as a small portion of the true market size.

With the rise of companies like Slack and Box, the phrase “consumerization of the enterprise was born”. At the same time, many attributed this trend to bottom up growth, as small teams within larger enterprises use a product that is so addictive and clearly superior to legacy products that it quickly spreads throughout the company. While this has clearly been the case in many next generation enterprise products focused on user experience, we believe that there is another massive opportunity that has just begun to take hold.

This opportunity is focused on providing the same easy to use tools and products to independent brokers and agents to both sell to their customers and to use for themselves. While companies like Zenefits have grown incredibly quickly by bypassing the legacy structure, another massive opportunity lies in providing user-friendly software to these very brokers.

Many different types of businesses prefer working with a human being on their benefits and HR needs, creating another massive market opportunity. In fact, I’d argue that in many cases companies don’t buy health insurance but rather, are sold health insurance.

For the reasons outlined above, I’m excited to announce our investment in EaseCentral’s seed round alongside Freestyle Capital, Upside Partnership, Deep Fork Capital and Transmedia Capital.

EaseCentral provides insurance brokers with cloud-based, user-friendly technology that enables employers and their employees to easily access and understand their benefits. Software like EaseCentral’s has never been available to insurance brokers before and they’re already off to a great start. The company already supports more than 900 brokers covering 10,00 employers and 290,000 employees.

Founder and CEO David Reid has an incredible amount of experience in this market and his co-founder and CTO Courtney Guertin has built several awesome consumer products. This combination of deep industry expertise and product experience is a big reason we’re so excited about this opportunity. I owe Chris Hutchins from Google Ventures a huge thank you for introducing us to the founders.

If you’re an insurance broker looking to scale your time and offer your clients the base software available, go to EaseCentral and sign up!