My adventures with corporate insurance began when I was a startup lawyer early in my career, advising founders whenever their financing documents required them to buy Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance within 30-90 days after their new VC round closed.
Then I left biglaw to scale startups, and that’s when the real fun began. Now, it was my turn to sit with insurance brokers to talk through page after page of insurance applications, premium amounts, and special coverage clauses.
Once you get this settled, you’re never quite done. From here you scale a bit, hire some more people, raise another round—and hopefully you remembered to update your insurance broker because now you get to go through the process all over again!
Over the years, I’ve thought to myself—founders already have plenty to worry about, and every scaling startup has to deal with this—why does startup insurance work this way?
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to—not anymore.
Our partner Vouch has built a new kind of insurance company for startups, built by founders for founders. The team at Vouch is always ahead of the curve, finding ways to deliver the modern coverage founders need (cyber incidents, AI errors and omissions, share ownership disputes), before they know they need it.
Today, Carta and Vouch are announcing two major steps forward for our ecosystem, to benefit the founders on Carta:
1) Easier onboarding with pre-fills
When a founder starts an insurance application with Vouch and authenticates using their Carta account, Vouch will pre-fill portions of the company’s application using the Carta API (see screenshot below). This makes Vouch’s onboarding process even more delightful and convenient, and founders who authenticate will receive an additional 5% discount off their coverage with Vouch.
2) Recommended coverage updates—an industry first
Starting later this year, if your startup is covered by Vouch, you’ll be able to use Vouch’s new integration with Carta to link your Carta account, keeping Vouch in the loop on key developments (such as a new round of financing) and enabling them to recommend an update to your coverage right when you need it. This will be an industry first, helping startups save time and preventing coverage gaps. For investors, this can close the risk gap between joining a board and ensuring the startup has the right D&O protection in place.
This is the way startup insurance should work in 2024—and with Carta and Vouch, it will.
Today marks the first steps in a journey for Carta and Vouch to modernize the insurance experience and provide tailored coverage that’s purpose-built for our ecosystem: insurance powered by real-time data from Carta’s platform. We have more work to do to unlock potential across VC fund coverage and Private Equity portfolios, and we’re excited to modernize those practices as well.
We’re thrilled to welcome Vouch to the Carta Developer Platform, and to work together with the Vouch team to help provide a little peace of mind for thousands of founders.
If you need to explore D&O or other types of coverage for your startup, click here to get started with Vouch today.
