The Zebra is a car insurance comparison website with headquarters in Austin, Texas. Often referred to as Kayak.com but for insurance, it compares rates from over 200 insurance carriers.
Video The Zebra
History
The Zebra was founded in 2012 by Adam Lyons who previously worked in the insurance industry in both brokering and underwriting. Originally named Insurance Zebra, the company initially started in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Zebra was part of the Alpha Lab Incubator Program run by the Pittsburgh venture capital firm Innovation Works, where it gained the attention of venture capital fund Silverton Partners.
ShowClix founder Joshua Dziabiak joined the company as the vice president of product in January 2013, coinciding with the company receiving a $1.5 million in seed funding from investors that included Mark Cuban, Silverton Partners, Floodgate, and Birchmere Labs. The funding was used to officially launch the website, with the company relocating to Austin, Texas and Dziabiak later being named company COO.
The Zebra was initially launched in September 2013 in both Texas and California, the two states with the most drivers. It initially offered quotes from 33 different insurers (approximately 90% of the market), requiring only a zip code and vehicle information to obtain a quote. The quotes were provided from a direct relationship that The Zebra had with the insurers, or through a rate manual from companies that it did not have a direct relationship with. The website allowed a more detailed quote for users who answered additional questions such as driving history. By the end of 2013, The Zebra was available to users in all 50 states, while increasing its platform to 204 companies that included 22 big carriers such as Esurance and The General. It also received an additional $3 million of funding from its existing investors, adding investor Simon Nixon to the list of new investors. In January 2016, The Zebra announced that it closed $17 million in Series A funding with investment from Cuban, Mike Maples Jr. (of Twitter and Lyft), Nixon, Silverton, and new investors Daher Capital and Ballast Point Ventures, bringing total funding to over $21 million.
The Zebra has received national media attention for its positioning as a disrupter in the $220 billion auto insurance industry, particularly with high school dropout Lyons at the helm, and because of his cold pitch email which caught investor Mark Cuban's eye. NBC Nightly News recommended The Zebra as a tool to compare car insurance quotes and save on rates. The company is also known for its sense of humor and culture, having issued a joke which Time Magazine included in its Best April Fools' Pranks of 2014, and the company was named a Best Place to Work in Austin in 2015 and 2016.
Maps The Zebra
See also
- Disruptive innovation
- Metasearch engine
- Online marketplace
References
External links
- thezebra
.com, the company's official website
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