Tech Spotlight: LifeDB rooted in founders’ personal experiences
May 27, 2015 by Matthew Patane, mpatane@dmreg.com
All three founders said they were drawn to LifeDB from past experience. Scott Venerable and Jason Dively each ran into problems with lost life insurance policies. Brent Williams said he was looking for a way to distinguish himself among his customers from other financial advisers.
LifeDB’s overall goal is to make the process of claiming life insurance policies quicker and more efficient. That includes multiple products, such as a database that tracks beneficiaries and a notification tool that tells beneficiaries when a claim is coming their way.
“Our company was really about taking two ideas and merging them together,” Williams said. “One was the searchable life insurance database … but also creating that notifying piece for people who would have no idea to even search that database.”
Those ideas circle around making it easier for beneficiaries to claim policies while reducing the number of unclaimed policies insurance companies would have to otherwise hand over to the states.
Some more about LifeDB:
Team: Brent Williams, Scott Venerable and Jason Dively
From: Des Moines.
LifeDB is: the creator of software to quicken the payments of life insurance claims.
Makes money by: subscriptions and fees charged to insurance providers.
What they’re getting from the accelerator: Connections to potential customers.
Their hope for demo day: Validation partners.
“We need to have validation partners so that we understand the user stories inside these life insurance companies. What are they dealing with on a day-to-day basis and how can we help make their lives easier,” Venerable said.
The biggest challenge: Narrowing down which path to take. “It’s been tough for us to start to narrow down some of the opinions we’ve gotten (from the mentors), but it’s a good challenge to have,” Dively said.
Check The Des Moines Register in the coming weeks for more about the teams going through the Global Insurance Accelerator.
About the accelerator
The Global Insurance Accelerator is based in Des Moines and is taking six startup teams through 100 days of fast-track business development and mentorship. Each team received $40,000 in seed funding, and the accelerator receives a stake in each startup. A demo day is scheduled May 27 during the Global Insurance Symposium.