Insurance works. You pay a premium, get a policy, and hope you never need it. The problem is everything around that model is outdated.
Tanner Hackett, founder and CEO of Counterpart, is building a different version—one where insurance is driven by data, not averages, and where value shows up before something goes wrong.
This matters if you’re a founder. Insurance becomes a real cost as you scale. It also becomes a hidden risk if you don’t understand what you’re buying.
Here’s what’s changing.
The Core Problem: Insurance Prices to Averages
Most insurers still operate the same way. They group companies together, price based on averages, and spread risk across the pool.
That creates two issues:
Good companies overpay
Risky companies get underpriced
Tanner puts it simply: insurance is a math problem. But most of the industry is using blunt math.
Counterpart takes a different approach. Instead of pricing broad categories, they analyze specific business attributes—industry, geography, team structure, financial health, and more—to predict risk more precisely.
The result: better pricing for strong operators, and clearer signals for companies that need to fix issues.
Why Previous Insurtech Startups Struggled
There’s no shortage of startups trying to “fix” insurance. Many raised large rounds. Most hit the same wall.
Two mistakes showed up repeatedly:
1. Growth over discipline
Companies chased top-line premium instead of long-term profitability. That works until claims catch up.
2. Ignoring domain expertise
Insurance isn’t just software. Underwriting, claims, and actuarial work take years to master. You can’t replace that overnight with code.
Counterpart built differently. They paired experienced insurance operators with strong technical infrastructure from day one.
That balance matters.
The Real Bottleneck: Pricing Risk Correctly
Most people assume distribution is the hard part in insurance. It’s not.
The hardest problem is pricing risk correctly.
If you get that wrong:
You lose money on claims
You damage trust with capital partners
You eventually get pushed out of the market
Counterpart operates as an MGA (managing general agent). That means they sell policies on behalf of larger carriers, using those carriers’ balance sheets.
Those partners care about one thing: can you price risk better than they can?
That’s where data becomes the advantage.
Building a Data Moat
Counterpart has written over 35,000 policies. But more important than the policies is the data behind them.
Every application, rejection, claim, and outcome feeds their models.
That allows them to:
Price policies faster
Adjust for niche industries (like dentists or manufacturers)
Improve loss ratios over time
This compounds. The more data they collect, the harder it becomes for new entrants to compete.
AI helps process the data. It doesn’t replace judgment.
Tanner’s view is clear: the future isn’t humans or AI. It’s both. Experts shape the system. AI scales it.
Insurance Should Do More Than Pay Claims
Most founders think insurance equals protection after something breaks.
That’s too late.
Counterpart focuses heavily on risk mitigation—helping companies avoid claims in the first place.
A simple example:
A new law requires job postings to include salary ranges. Miss it, and you can face fines per applicant. Plaintiff attorneys actively look for violations.
Instead of waiting for claims, Counterpart:
Identifies the issue
Alerts customers
Helps fix it before it escalates
This shifts insurance from reactive to proactive.
And it aligns incentives. If customers avoid claims, everyone wins.
What Founders Should Actually Do
If you’re building a company and starting to think about insurance, focus on the basics.
1. Get your hiring process right
Most claims come from employee disputes. Clear expectations upfront reduce risk.
2. Create and enforce a handbook
Spell out acceptable behavior. Make sure employees acknowledge it.
3. Be transparent with customers
Set clear expectations on deliverables. Avoid gaps between promise and reality.
4. Align with investors early
Misalignment at the board level can lead to serious legal exposure.
5. Don’t optimize only for price
Cheap insurance often means poor coverage or bad underwriting.
You’re not just buying a policy. You’re buying how risk gets handled when something goes wrong.
The Most Misleading Metric in Insurance
Premium looks like revenue. It isn’t.
It’s just the amount charged for risk.
You can write one $100,000 policy or 100,000 $1 policies. Same premium. Completely different outcomes.
What matters more:
Loss ratio
Speed of claims resolution
Quality of underwriting
Tanner compares it to investing. More data points lead to better decisions.
Where This Goes Next
Counterpart is starting with management and professional liability. But the bigger goal is clear.
Build tailored insurance products for specific industries:
Dentists
Restaurants
Manufacturers
Service businesses
Each has unique risks. Each needs custom coverage.
The long-term opportunity isn’t just selling insurance. It’s becoming the system that understands business risk at a granular level.
Final Thought
Tanner started in marketplaces and marketing tech. Now he’s building in one of the most complex financial systems.
The throughline is consistent: data changes how markets operate.
Insurance hasn’t caught up yet.
But once pricing becomes precise, and risk becomes visible in real time, the entire industry shifts.
And the companies that understand their risk best will pay less, move faster, and survive longer.
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Chapters:
00:01 – Introduction and Tanner Hackett Background
00:33 – Early Career: Lazada and Southeast Asia E-commerce
01:30 – Building Button and Mobile Commerce Insights
02:03 – Founding Counterpart and Shift to Insurance
02:19 – Initial Idea: HR Tech to Insurtech Pivot
04:11 – What’s Broken in Insurance Today
06:15 – Why Previous Insurtech Startups Failed
08:16 – Understanding MGA and Insurance Business Model
09:16 – Why Now Is the Right Time for Counterpart
11:49 – Rethinking Value in Insurance
13:07 – Insurance Categories Counterpart Focuses On
17:28 – Distribution vs Underwriting Bottlenecks
19:45 – Data Advantage and Underwriting at Scale
21:25 – Insurance Basics for Startups
27:02 – Counterpart’s End-to-End Platform Approach
29:28 – AI, Data Infrastructure, and Pricing Risk
33:48 – Building a Data Moat in Insurance
35:10 – Founder Advice: Reducing Risk and Lowering Premiums
38:05 – Real-World Claims and Insurance Stories
39:21 – Fintech and HR Tech Companies Tanner Admires
40:58 – Long-Term Vision for Counterpart
42:29 – Closing Thoughts and Future of Insurance
Transcript
Brian Bell (00:01:21): Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today we’re thrilled to have Tanner Hackett on the mic. He is the founder and CEO of Counterpart, an insurtech company rebuilding insurance for small businesses using AI-driven underwriting and risk infrastructure. Before Counterpart, Tanner helped build Lazada in Southeast Asia and co-founded Button, giving him a rare mix of marketplace data and operator experience. Thanks for coming on, Tanner. Thanks for having me, Brian. Great to be here. Yeah. Yeah. So I’d love to start with your origin story. What’s your background?
Tanner Hackett (00:01:49): I think you touched on it. It’s been a journey. Had the great fortune of building companies in different geographies and different continents, starting with Lazada in Southeast Asia, which was a rocket internet company. We built but really the foundations for e-commerce in Southeast Asia where I was based in Malaysia building Amazon for Southeast Asia we had entities across Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and brought forth e-commerce and then went on to build a marketing tech company called Button I was based in New York this was leaning to the learnings from e-commerce in Southeast Asia quite frankly where they leapfrog from laptop to mobile phone. And we saw this is the coming wave of commerce. And we’re able to ride this in building out one of the largest mobile affiliate networks in e-commerce. And then an even larger jump, both from the industry and my roles and responsibilities taking on CEO role as a founder of Counterpart and that’s in the insurance space where we’re trying to take a lot of the learnings around data infrastructure systems architecture of technology to an industry that is in need of reinvention
Brian Bell (00:03:03): Frankly, it was happenstance. I originally envisioned counterpart.
Tanner Hackett (00:03:20): it was more on the HR tech side I knew that small businesses especially needed better support infrastructure insights into how to operate in today’s very dynamic environment I mean look at what’s occurred over the last five years we’ve gone from COVID to supply constraints inflation employment employer employee relations are continuing to evolve now we have AI and so I thought HR tech would be the vector to solve this and weaving together all the tools that were proving to be successful in building psychological safety, trust, transparency, improving business operations. culture governance and compliance you can just imagine what they are what their applicant tracking systems or or whether it’s performance feedback tools so I started off going this direction and then quickly realized that these businesses are just trying to make ends meet they don’t have time to make these investments and instead what they do is transfer us and there’s a industry that’s been around for a very long time that is very good at this and taking premium dollars from a company and giving you a piece of paper that says we will protect you in the event this claim occurs so it sent me down a very interesting path that has led us to build one of the most exciting insurance companies in this industry and this very large surface area of InsurTech.
Brian Bell (00:04:49): So what’s fundamentally broken about insurance today?
Tanner Hackett (00:04:51): Look, it does the job, right? We’re able to check the box and say we have a policy and we get a piece of paper. It’s a PDF and it makes people happy. It makes our lenders happy and it makes our customers happy and it It makes our landlords happy but if you just take a first principles approach about what insurance is intended to do its intent is to help these businesses from the risks that are most obvious or not obvious but most frequent the things that are going to be existential Things that are really going to take their time and effort away from what should be occupying their time, which is building a great company. And unfortunately, it just hasn’t evolved from a piece of paper. Despite all the tools and technology and data that’s available to us, we’re still just taking a piece of paper and sending a check. And so when I looked at the industry, I was really thinking about it from that HR lens of how do we help companies do more with less risk? how do we help isolate them from these obvious exposures or give them the guidance the knowledge to address the exposures before it becomes a claim and if it becomes a claim how do we make sure that they solve the claim as quickly as possible and can get back to work and I think these areas of insurance are grossly underinvested in. I think there’s lots of talented people in insurance. It’s just they haven’t been able to pair together with technologists to provide a more comprehensive solution in light of all the volatility, the new exposures they face and a pretty active plaintiff’s counsel.
Brian Bell (00:06:25): So there’s been a lot of insurtech companies over the years trying to fix this. What did they misunderstand that you guys are getting right?
Tanner Hackett (00:06:33): Yeah, there’s some great companies out there. I think they recognize that technology Profitability was the tool that could help to propel this industry forward. You need really deep expertise in actuarial science, underwriting, claims management, risk mitigation. These are roles that it takes decades of experience to really hone. And they said, you know what? That’s nice. You do it your way. We’re going to bring technology in as the solve. And so you pair that with investors that are saying, we want to see you grow, grow, grow. Well, that creates a black box where you’re you’re putting in risks you’re shipping out policies but it eventually catches up to you through poor loss ratios and what we don’t realize or what I experienced for the first time in building an insurance is that it’s not just your investors that you need to satisfy there’s not two sources of capital you need to satisfy one is obviously your investors and you need to show them that you can build enterprise value over the long term but the second is your capacity so that’s your insurance capacity because you’re not taking risk originally. You’re writing insurance on behalf of insurance companies that have licenses.
Brian Bell (00:07:59): Like some servicer or something like that?
Tanner Hackett (00:08:02): Well, let’s call it an MGA. So we’re selling policies on behalf of a carrier. We’re using their balance sheet to sell policies. So they’re trusting us to write risks on their behalf. And obviously that relationship is not going to last very long. If you’re going out there and selling policies below what the market rate should be, because you haven’t invested in the insurance expertise where they could guide you and say, ooh, that might look like a good risk for now, but it’s going to catch up to you. or look at your loss trends and you have to extrapolate what the development period is over a long term because this litigation takes five years to be fully adjudicated. And this is that knowledge that I felt was missing from these original InsureTechs
Brian Bell (00:08:47): that we made huge investments in Upfront and Counterpart. So why now? What was it about the business that you kind of looked around and you said, okay, this needs to be fixed and now’s a good time to fix it?
Tanner Hackett (00:08:58): My journey from HR tech to insure tech, it laid obvious this gap in the value chain for these businesses. I had been purchasing management liability insurance for every company that we ran. I just didn’t know what it was. I was paying 50 grand for these policies. But it was because I was told by the board, yeah, we need DNO insurance. Or I was told by our agent, hey, we need DPLI insurance because we’re above 10 people or 15 people. Nobody sat down and said, Okay, here’s your exposures and here’s how much you have to pay. And here’s what will happen if you don’t pay. And so the math didn’t make sense. You’re paying too much for what I thought the exposures were. And ultimately this becomes, insurance is a math problem. And what I saw in insurance was, a lot of these insurance carriers are writing to averages and so they’re taking the good risks with the bad risks and they can’t especially in small businesses we’re talking about a few thousand dollars in premium that’s not much that’s not much money for them to take if you’re writing to averages you just need to be able to select the best businesses and give them the best pricing and the whole math equation goes out out of whack because all of a sudden the insurance carriers that aren’t as sophisticated, there’s going to be adverse selection. They’re going to be writing those bad companies at average prices. We’re going to be writing the good companies at better prices and being very honest with those companies that we don’t think deserve that average price. We’re going to say, you know your price is 2x what the market is so obviously they’re not going to select us to write the business so it’s part of this math problem and then part the the the problem of trying to rethink what insurance could be because let’s be honest nobody’s excited about their insurance company you don’t go home and say oh I just I just met this really great insurance company that I I paid 15 grand for but I like them I trust them I think they’re fantastic you go Man, I pay 15 grand. I hope this is worth it. And I want to show value much earlier in that relationship than just helping them sleep better at night. I want to show that we’re on top of what the evolving exposures are in their industry, in their geography, We’re giving them the coaching and support to be better businesses. Whether this is giving them tools to build handbooks, whether this is giving them access to HR experts, whether this is giving them a dedicated attorney when they have to make tough decisions about employees. These are things that obviously benefit this company because they may not have access to these resources or as sophisticated resources, but ultimately it benefits us, right? If we can help prevent a claim or at least reduce the severity of a claim. It benefits us both. So it’s aligning the risk. And that hadn’t been solved in insurance. It was part an effort thing and part a will. These businesses are often overlooked because they’re so small. Have a lot of risk. The insurance industry has a lot of risk management tools for larger companies, but the small businesses just aren’t getting the support and resources that I think they deserve.
Tanner Hackett (00:12:08): Yeah, so Counterpart is specifically focused on specialty lines of insurance, specialty liability. There’s a few types of this, but we really focus on management liability and professional liability. Ultimately, these cover businesses and the gray space where culture compliance governance business operation hits the road this is directors and officers insurance employment practices insurance fiduciary insurance crime and you know errors and omissions so these are these are this is really litigation from employees customers and key stakeholders investors even the government and it was fascinating to think about this from an organizational behavior perspective and What makes a good company and what makes a bad company? And look, building companies is not easy. We know that. It’s a pressure cooker. Individuals are put in an environment where they’re asked to do impossible things and with limited resources. And as somebody on my team likes to say, it’s pressure either creates diamonds or breaks pipes and people are gonna make mistakes. So we want to be there as a insurance company protecting the downside when these mistakes inevitably happen. And we wanna give the tools for these businesses to give them the highest probability of success. And it goes back to my point on mission alignment. how do we structure how do we take our knowledge from we’ve written policy over 35,000 policies how do we take this knowledge of what makes a good company the infrastructure that they should put in place for their people the contracts that they should put in place for their customers that is going to protect their downside And again, give them the biggest probability of success.
Brian Bell (00:13:47): So it’s interesting. The problem that you’re solving is both distribution for your partners, right? Because they want to sell more policies, right? But they want to sell policies and make money on the policies that they want to maintain a loss ratio and a profit margin. So where is the bottleneck? Is it distribution and underwriting or is it something else?
Tanner Hackett (00:14:06): yeah I mentioned before that there’s there’s two capital partners you need to satisfy well there’s multiple distribution partners you need to satisfy as well and these businesses don’t really understand the complexity of the insurance product they’re buying so it needs to be sold to them And so we work with brokers, agents to educate them about what their exposures are and why they need to purchase this line of insurance. And that is a big bottleneck, right? If a customer is, these policies can be 20, 40, 60 pages and it’s all legalese. So we work really closely with our broker partners to help make this information consumable. We make our products accessible and we try and price them efficiently. And it’s a big problem in insurance because traditionally they’ll just say, I know AIG or I know Travelers and I know Chubb. So I’m just going to go with the brand. And so we have to work that much harder. We have to provide a really convincing argument as to why go with a new brand versus just somebody with big pocketbooks. So there’s that problem. And then there’s the underwriting problem, which is pricing efficiently. Yeah, we’re early in this journey of counterpart on a relative basis, but I mentioned we’ve written 35,000 policies. Well, those 35,000 policies are a fraction of the applications we’ve seen and where we’re using all of this data to better price the next risk. I would argue that despite only being five years into this we have more data on management liability professional liability small business than anybody else in our space and then the other pieces are claims management claims management this is where the rubber hits the road whether you’re profitable or not is can you get to a resolution as quickly as possible that’s going to be the best outcome for the plaintiff because again mistakes are made and we want to be there to support these businesses but also the customer so they can get back to work and settle down as quickly as possible. And we’re doing so in environments where the plaintiff counsel is very, very sophisticated. They’re using every tool available to them, using better data, using knowledge about the judge, using knowledge of the circumstances to extract the best outcome for their customers. And then lastly is risk mitigation. These businesses don’t really trust us yet. They don’t know us. We’re still a new kid on the block and they haven’t had the best experience with their previous insurance companies. And therefore, they’re less inclined to actually solicit feedback from us, to partner with us from a risk management standpoint. So we have to go out of our way to say, here, use these services. Some of these are just, all you have to do is pick up the phone and make a call. And this could take a really, really difficult circumstance and totally diffuse it. At the very least, we’re going to be able to reduce the severity of this. Hopefully we can make it totally go away.
Brian Bell (00:16:59): So for the startups out there listening that may be thinking about, you know, what kind of insurance do I need? Maybe you could talk about the kinds of insurance they do need as they scale, right? As they get bigger, when they need it, they can do internally at their companies to prepare for getting quotes, right? That way they put their best foot forward and get the best rates.
Tanner Hackett (00:17:16): Yeah, great question. So it’s very dependent on the size and stage of business you’re at. If you’re a one person shop, you really don’t have that much exposure. You’re probably going to need some sort of general liability insurance. If you have premises and you start to hire employees, then you’re going to purchase what is a BOP insurance. And essentially, it’s a combination of some property and some general liability insurance that just It’s like a CYA insurance. As you become a larger company, this is where your risks really compound. And this is where I’d strongly advise a employment practices insurance. This is around harassment, discrimination, negligence, wrongful termination. These happen very frequently, especially in jurisdictions like California and in Los Angeles.
Brian Bell (00:18:04): Is there such thing as a wrongful termination? Because everybody’s like at will, right? I could just be like, I don’t like your glasses, Tanner, and just fire you, right? I like your glasses, by the way. They’re great.
Tanner Hackett (00:18:13): Thank you. Thank you. It is tied to some event around harassment or discrimination. So that is the cause of the wrongful termination. Okay. And so it must demonstrate that action was taken. Not due to performance.
Brian Bell (00:18:31): Performance, but some sort of sexual harassment or race, gender, whatever. Exactly. Some bias. Categorical harassment. Precisely. Which it happens very, very frequently.
Tanner Hackett (00:18:44): Because think about it, your employee and, you know, we’re... We’re very biased in our own favor. And we think we’re doing a great job. And our employer may not agree with us. And so we look for causality. Well, causality can’t be my performance. It must be some other factor. And plaintiff attorneys are eager to jump on these. Very eager. I was injured and so I’ll just call one of these injury attorneys on the you know the interstate 80 one of these billboards I mean, there’s a reason all these billboards are peppered with these plaintiff attorneys. They make a lot of money. They figured out how to extort our system, our judicial system, and take advantage of these insurance carriers that don’t know how to push back on their data resources, their leveraging of technology. It’s still hand-to-hand combat on the defense council and with the adjusters. Meanwhile, The plaintiff attorneys have absolute weapons that they’re deploying.
Brian Bell (00:19:52): Yeah, including some of our portfolio companies.
Tanner Hackett (00:19:54): In those instances, our claims team really steps up and we are not afraid to push back. I think that’s the other thing is that these plaintiff attorneys have the gumption to proceed with rather frivolous lawsuits because they know that if it’s around a certain dollar amount, the insurance company would rather just stroke a check and make it go away.
Brian Bell (00:20:16): Yeah, just cut a check and just be done with it rather than try to litigate and all that.
Tanner Hackett (00:20:19): Bingo. Bingo. Bingo. The threat of a jury trial is something that really scares people. Bingo Because we know that every dollar that goes to pay these plaintiff attorneys means the next customer has to pay more. Aren’t a lot of insurance policies founded by arbitration though as well?
Tanner Hackett (00:20:44): There’s no arbitration that happens necessarily between the plaintiff and the defendant. We would prefer to have arbitration than go to a jury trial, but that’s...
Brian Bell (00:20:56): If you’re an insurance company and it’s a policyholder, that’s one thing. Exactly. exactly so you guys are an end-to-end platform it sounds like for this type of insurance so it’s not just claims but it’s also kind of the origination and underwriting and quoting software as well so it’s end-to-end
Tanner Hackett (00:21:12): Yeah, that’s my belief. It’s that you have to come with a platform approach. You can’t just solve one piece of the puzzle because every policy we bind, essentially we’re subscribing to that risk. And we want to make sure that they’re getting the adequate coverage that they need, the adequate support that they need along the 12 months of the policy. But then also when a claim occurs, we’re holding their hand and standing by the promises we made.
Brian Bell (00:21:36): Yeah. What about VCs like me? Have you underwritten some policies for venture capitalists? For the VCs out there listening, what should we know about this type of insurance?
Tanner Hackett (00:21:46): It’s funny you say that. We don’t underwrite venture capital firms or private equity firms yet, although we made a really important hire for someone that’s focused on financial institutions. It’s almost like its own product, financial institutions.
Brian Bell (00:22:01): Yeah, it’s different from a business. It’s like different kind of needs and fiduciary and yeah. Yeah.
Tanner Hackett (00:22:07): As you know, your insurance stack is going to look much different from a traditional operating company. But I will say that underwriting these companies is almost the same as underwriting an investment. I’ve done some investing myself and you do have to look at the financials. They’re the number... one of the most important indicators, if not the most important indicator of is this company going to have run into litigation? Because think about what happens when you’re under financial stress. You start to make decisions that are under duress. You start to make your thinking much shorter term. You’re maybe not allocating enough time to support the team. Your quality of service goes down for your customers. So yeah, we really look at the financials of a business and trying to determine what type of coverage that they need and the pricing for that coverage.
