Featured Startup Pitch: Y Combinator-backed SimplyInsured wants to tame the healthcare monster for small businesses and their employees

By Vivek Shah, SimplyInsured co-founder and CEO

Elevator Pitch: SimplyInsured is 100 percent paperless and online health insurance for small businesses. We offer a full suite of health insurance tools for small businesses—benefit management, payroll integration, mobile insurance cards, and more.

Product/Service Description

SimplyInsured is simple, no-hassle health insurance for small businesses. Our streamlined health insurance manager is 100 percent online and will save you money on your health insurance. We analyze thousands of insurance policies to find the best coverage, price and value for your personalized situation.

More than this though, we want to remove the fear people have when approaching medical care. As an example, last month we had a client go to the emergency room because her husband had a stroke. She arrived to the ER, however the staff could not find her insurance. She panicked as she realized she could receive a $100,000 medical bill, an amount she could not afford.

Health insurance companies are only available from 8-to-5, and no one was there to help her—no one, except for SimplyInsured. We got on the phone and helped her find her insurance, making sure she was comfortable with the process.

Founders’ Story

My co-founder Bob Aspell and I initially started the company after a confusing experience trying to buy health insurance. It fundamentally bothered me that I was trying to buy health insurance to reduce my fear of going to the doctor, but the process of buying health insurance made me more afraid. I had earlier worked as a healthcare analyst at McKinsey & Company, and I felt I had the right background to try to solve this challenge.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Our biggest focus is on providing the best experience possible so our customers share the service with their friends. Today at SimplyInsured, customer satisfaction with existing clients is over 95 percent.

Market Opportunity

There are 400,000 traditional health insurance brokers, and together they make approximately $17 billion in commissions from health insurance for small businesses. There are 8.5 million small businesses in the United States, and more than 65 percent offer a health plan to their employees.

How We Differentiate From the Competition

Most companies look at this opportunity as simply bringing insurance online. However, SimplyInsured is not only about bringing health insurance online, rather it is about removing the fear people have when approaching medical care. No insurance broker makes it easier to use health insurance than SimplyInsured.

Business Model

SimplyInsured is paid by the insurance companies—we act as a broker, and are paid a commission from the insurance company.

Current Needs

We are currently looking to scale out our team. We have a listing of job openings here.

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Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Website: www.simplyinsured.com

Founders: Vivek Shah, Bob Aspell

Investment: $750,000 (Seed)

Investors: Altair Capital, Jake Gibson, Tim Chen, Waseem Daher, Jeff Arnold, Amee Chaudry, Adil Chaudry, Sam Melamed, Matt Huang, Y Combinator

Accelerator: Y Combinator

Year Founded: 2012

Twitter: @SimplyInsured

Facebook: facebook.com/SimplyInsured

CrunchBase: crunchbase.com/company/simplyinsured

AngelList: angel.co/simplyinsured