Ignite Startups: Fixing Insurance for Small Businesses Using AI with Tanner Hackett | Ep268

Episode notes

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 The problem is everything around that model is outdated.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.